good long holiday--rather a difficult job for a man who cares a
great deal about his work and very little about anything else;" he
added a few medical details, from which I gathered the nature of
his illness. Then he went on to talk of casual matters; it seemed
to interest him to discuss what had been happening to our school
and college friends; but I knew, without being told, that he wished
me to understand that he did not expect to resume his place in the
world--and indeed I divined, by some dim communication of the
spirit, that he thought my visit was probably a farewell. But he
talked with unabated courage and interest, smiling where he would
in old days have laughed, and speaking of our friends with more
tenderness than was his wont. Only once did he half betray what was
in his mind: "It is rather strange," he said, "to be pushed aside
like this, and to have to reconsider one's theories. I did not
expect to have to pull up--the path lay plain before me--and now it
seems to me as if there were a good many things I had lost sight
of. Well, one must take things as they come, and I don't think that
if I had it all to do again I should do otherwise." He changed the
subject rather hurriedly, and began to talk about my work. "You are
quite a great man now," he said with a smile; "I hear your books
talked about wherever I go--I used to wonder if you would have had
the patience to do anything--you were hampered by having no need to
earn your living; but you have come out on the top." I told him
something about my own late experiences and my difficulty in
writing. He listened with undisguised interest. "What do you make
of it?" he said. "Well," I said; "you will think I am talking
transcendentally, but I have felt often of late as if there were
two strains in our life, two kinds of experience; at one time we
have to do our work with all our might, to get absorbed in it, to
do what little we can to enrich the world; and then at another time