cord?"

"It was foreordained."

"And was it actually marked in your hands that you were not going
to pull it?"

"Ah, well, you see, it is rather the things one IS going to do
that are actually marked. The things one isn't going to do,--the
innumerable negative things,--how could one expect THEM to be
marked?"

"But the consequences of what one leaves undone may be
positive?"

"Horribly positive. My hand is the hand of a man who has suffered
a great deal in later life."

"And was it the hand of a man DESTINED to suffer?"

"Oh, yes. I thought I told you that."

There was a pause.

"Well," I said, with awkward sympathy, "I suppose all hands are the
hands of people destined to suffer."

"Not of people destined to suffer so much as _I_ have
suffered--as I still suffer."