“That is very ingenious,” Daniel told him. “Do you notice that the smoke is thicker in the east?” “Not more in one direction than in another,” Lee answered indirectly; “in the east and south, the north and west, up above and underneath. It's a good thing for our comfort that there's so much of it we can't see the fires. If the books of physics are to be credited, the center of the earth is liquid flame; certainly it is hot enough here to suggest something of the sort.” “It is worse in Oriente,” Daniel informed him. “What I have said,” Lee Randon continued, “came from my remark, the one you disagreed with, about the need of an understanding everywhere! Isolated, in a chance individual like me, it is worse than useless, fatal. It destroys the support of a common cause with a humanity only less resentful than sentimental. And this has brought me to the reason why--in spite of her splendid proposal--I can't go back to Fanny: I have grown too detached to give her effort a possibility of success, of happiness for her.” “If you are so cursed abstract, you may as well be in Eastlake as at La Quinta,” his brother asserted. “Your saying that is curious,” Lee replied, “for it is exactly what I told a man, in circumstances remarkably like my own, not long ago. I explained that life was all monotonously alike; and that, therefore, it didn't really matter where he changed to. I still think that most of it is inexcusable, perhaps hopeless, but I can't subscribe to it. What Fanny wants is contrition and the return to a time forever lost. I shouldn't be able to persuade her that I hadn't been in a temporary fever which, if she were sufficiently careful, would go and leave things very much as they were. That is her strength, her necessity, and she must uphold it until farthest old age and death.” Daniel Randon rose and went to the railing of the veranda, gazing intently into the hidden east. “You are right,” he said, crediting Lee with a contention he hadn't made; “that is the refuse on Jagües.” “Helena and Gregory don't need me,” Lee went on and on; “or, if you prefer--I am no longer afraid of words--I don't need them. I believe, in nature, that the length of paternity is measured by the helplessness of the young. An elephant is more devoted than a crow. My obligation was soon ended.” “Bring it down to this,” Daniel's brevity was explicit: “what in the devil are you going to do?”