At last there was blessed quiet, and he could write again. The city slept; the last boarder was abed; the turpentine had become a peace out of pain; only the ticking of the clock filtered into the perfect calm of the dining-room. The little Doctor of Mrs. Paynter's stood face to face with his love, embraced his heart's desire. He looked into the heart of Science and she gave freely to her lord and master. Sprawled there over the Turkey-red cloth, which was not unhaunted by the ghosts of dead dinners, he became chastely and divinely happy. His mind floated away into the empyrean; he saw visions of a far more perfect Society; dreamed dreams of the ascending spiral whose law others had groped at, but he would be the first to formulate; caught and fondled the secret of the whole great Design; reduced it to a rule-of-thumb to do his bidding; bestrode the whole world like a great Colossus.... From which flight he descended with a thud to observe that it was quarter of two o'clock, and the dining-room was cold with the dying down of the Latrobe, and the excellent reading-lamp in the death-throes of going out. He went upstairs in the dark, annoyed with himself for having overstayed his bedtime. Long experimentation had shown him that the minimum of sleep he could get along with to advantage was six and one-half hours nightly. This meant bed at 1.30 exactly, and he hardly varied it five minutes in a year. To his marrow he was systematic; he was as definite as an adding-machine, as practical as a cash register. But even now, on this exceptional night, he did not go straight to bed. Something still remained to be accomplished: an outrage upon his sacred Schedule. In the first halcyon days at Mrs. Paynter's, before the board question ever came up at all, the iron-clad Schedule of Hours under which he was composing his great work had stood like this: 8.20 Breakfast 8.40 Evolutionary Sociology 1.30 Dinner 2 Evolutionary Sociology 7 Supper 7.20 to 1.30 Evolutionary Sociology But the course of true love never yet ran smooth, and this schedule was too ideal to stand. First the _Post_ had come along and nicked a clean hour out of it, and now his Body had unexpectedly risen and claimed yet another hour. And, beyond even this ... some devilish whim had betrayed him to-night into offering his time for the service and uses of the landlady's daughter in the puling matter of algebra. No ... _no!_ He would not put that in. The girl could not be so selfish as to take advantage of his over-generous impulse. She _must_ understand that his time belonged to the ages and the race, not to the momentary perplexities of a high school dunce.... At the worst it would be only five minutes here and there--say ten minutes a week; forty minutes a month. No, no! He would not put that in.