He got up and walked to and fro nervously, and as he moved and talked he became transformed. The timid, shrinking little figure vanished and in its place strode one whose step was firm and eye fearless. “There are hundreds like me. The woods--the city’s accursed woods are full of them. They run over each other in their eagerness to do the bidding of some master who can drop a coin or so into their flabby purses. Faust sold his soul to the devil for a good price; but we, miserable wretches, sell it daily for a song. Why? Because we are such pitiful cowards that we can’t face the scarecrow that goes by the name of starvation. We live so far below our true selves that we don’t know the law that would carry us through, which is, give the best to get the best. Why not trust the soul? The ideal is the real; it is the voice of the soul, otherwise the voice of God, and it _must_ have expression. If not here and now, then sometime, somewhere. Its account is bound to be presented and _must_ be paid. Death itself can’t prevent the final settlement. “What do they do at school with the lazy boy who slights his lessons? After a while they turn him back in his books and he has his road to retrace. We shall have the same experience, if we have heard the voice of the ideal and heeded it not. We shall be sent back to do it all over again--yes, from beyond the grave, for what can there be on the other side for him who has betrayed his trust, but contempt and a command to go back and try again?” He stopped before Cartice, and with blazing eyes and uplifted finger said, “In this moment I determine to outrage my ideals no more, come what may. I have new light. We all have been acting on the assumption that we knew what would happen if we didn’t do thus and so. In point of fact nobody knows. With results we have nothing to do. We have only to follow our highest leading and leave the rest to God. To ignore or debase a noble gift that has been entrusted to us is a sin against our souls, which many of us have stupidly committed day after day, and we are daily paying the penalty. You shall see me here no more, bartering work in which I have no heart for a few miserable dollars. Never again; no, never again.” “You are right, Mr. Bardell, a thousand times right,” said Mrs. Doring, with throbbing heart and glistening eyes. “I have long known that one should never give less than the best, and that an outraged ideal will be avenged. Yet I daily commit that sin. I used to feel that I had something more than common to do in the world. I had ideals; but I put them off, always waiting for a time when I could see my way clear to devote myself entirely to them. I waited too long. Now they come less frequently and are less urgent, and I have grown weary and indifferent. I wasted my time hunting happiness.”