"Andrew's new to the business, and undertook it with reluctance from a sense of duty. For all that, though his ignorance of commercial matters must be a handicap, I expect him to make a success of it." "One would imagine that a desire to make money is the more usual object, but I think you're right. In fact, you have touched upon a pet idea of mine." The girl turned and studied him. There was a trace of gravity in his manner, and she understood that he had done with credit difficult and dangerous work. "What is the idea?" she asked. "To put it roughly, something like this--more depends on character than specialized training; determination and strong sincerity often carry one farther than a knowledge of the rules of the game. One sees people who rely on the latter come to grief." "Even in Company floating?" "That," said Murray, smiling, "is a subject about which I'm ignorant. I was speaking of the general principle." "Do you mean that right must prevail?" "I'm sanguine enough to believe it often does in the end." "One would like to think so. But as we seem to be getting serious, isn't the question whether it prevails or not another matter from an altruistic point of view?" Murray pondered this and then looked up with a twinkle. "So long as I'm not priggish, I don't mind being serious. You see, I'm fresh from the shadowy bush, where life is solemn enough, and when I came home not long ago after a three years' absence I felt strangely out of place. You're at a disadvantage when you can't talk about the latest musical comedy or popular dancer, and it's as bad not to know the favorite for an approaching steeplechase. However, to stick to our subject, I see what you mean. One must do one's work and not worry about the result?" Olcott was passing and he stopped beside them. "Murray seems to be moralizing," he laughed. "I must warn you that he spends his evenings in Africa sitting behind a mosquito-netting studying the early Victorian philosophers. It's some excuse for him that when the niggers are quiet he has nothing else to do and nobody to talk to except a colored official." "Don't you get any newspapers?" Ethel asked. "They're often too wet and pulpy to read, and now and then the sporting natives bag the mail-carrier. I've known them try to stalk the white officer responsible for too drastic reforms." Ethel regarded Murray with heightened interest. There was something that both amused and touched her in the thought of the lonely man, shut in by the black, steamy forest, spending his evenings reading philosophy. "I wonder," she said, "whether you find any practical application of the great thinkers' theories?" "One old favorite of mine strikes me as rather grim and singularly hard to please; but so far as I can judge, he hits the mark now and then. It's a pet theme of his that only that which stands on justice, and is better than what it displaces, can endure. You see that worked out in a primitive country like West Africa."