"WHAT shall I do? what ought I to do?" Dick walked up and down the room smoking, furiously and without at all savouring its richness, one of his opulent cigars. "My dear," said Cravister--for it was in Cravister's high-ceilinged Bloomsbury room that Dick was thus unveiling his distress of spirit--"my dear, this isn't a revival meeting. You speak as though there were an urgent need for your soul to be saved from hell fire. It's not as bad as that, you know." "But it _is_ a revival meeting," Dick shouted in exasperation--"it is. I'm a revivalist. You don't know what it's like to have a feeling about your soul. I'm terrifyingly earnest; you don't seem to understand that. I have all the feelings of Bunyan without his religion. I regard the salvation of my soul as important. How simple everything would be if one could go out with those creatures in bonnets and sing hymns like, 'Hip, hip for the blood of the Lamb, hurrah!' or that exquisite one: "'The bells of Hell ring tingalingaling For you, but not for me. For me the angels singalingaling; They've got the goods for me.' Unhappily it's impossible." "Your ideas," said Cravister in his flutiest voice, "are somewhat Gothic. I think I can understand them, though of course I don't sympathize or approve. My advice to people in doubt about what course of action they ought to pursue is always the same: do what you want to." "Cravister, you're hopeless," said Dick, laughing. "I suppose I am rather Gothic, but I do feel that the question of ought as well as of want does arise." Dick had come to his old friend for advice about Life. What ought he to do? The indefatigable pen of Pearl Bellairs solved for him the financial problem. There remained only the moral problem: how could he best expend his energies and his time? Should he devote himself to knowing or doing, philosophy or politics? He felt in himself the desire to search for truth and the ability--who knows?--to find it. On the other hand, the horrors of the world about him seemed to call on him to put forth all his strength in an effort to ameliorate what was so patently and repulsively bad. Actually, what had to be decided was this: Should he devote himself to the researches necessary to carry out the plan, long ripening in his brain, of a new system of scientific philosophy; or should he devote his powers and Pearl Bellairs' money in propaganda that should put life into the English revolutionary movement? Great moral principles were in the balance. And Cravister's advice was, do what you want to!