about the forces to which they yield, so that this one will only ignite
with heat and that only with concussion--these facts had from his
earliest knowledge of them been gilded with irrational delight, and it
had been no effort to him to work at the subject with an austere
diligence that had shown itself worth while in that last paper he had
read at the Paris Conference. That was a pretty piece of research. But
now for the first time he resented his chemistry work because it was of
no service to his personal life. Before, it had always seemed to him the
special dignity of his vocation that it could conduct its researches
without resorting to the use of humanity and that he could present his
results unsigned by his own personality. He had often pitied doctors,
who, instead of dealing with exquisitely consistent chemicals, have to
work on men and women, unselected specimens of the most variable of all
species, which was singularly inept at variating in the direction of
beauty; and it seemed miraculous that he could turn the yeasty workings
of his mind into cool, clear statements of hitherto unstated truth that
would in no way betray to those that read them that their maker was
lustful and hot-tempered and, about some things, melancholic. He had
felt Science to be so gloriously above life; to make the smallest
discovery was like hearing the authentic voice of God who is no man but
a Spirit.

But now none of these things mattered. He was caught in the net of life
and nothing that was above it was of any use to him; as well expect a
man who lies through the night with his foot in a man-trap to be
comforted by the beauty of the stars. The only God he could have any use
for would be the kind the Salvationists talk about, who goes about
giving drunken men an arm past the public-house and coming between the
pickpocket and Black Maria with a well-timed text. There was nothing in
Science that would lift him out of this hell of loneliness, this