Routledge looked back upon those pure days wistfully now. It is given a man but once in this life to follow the Way. When manhood is fresh and sensitive, retaining all its delicate bloom and unhurt power; and when, full of a hunger that never falls below the diaphragm, the young man turns for Truth to the masters and sages--this is the time to choose between the world and the stars! This is the time that the world gives battle to detain the searching soul. “Look, yonder is a Joseph climbing to God!” cries the old Flesh-mother; and, gathering her minions of enchantment and her dragons of fear, she scorns the lower cities, all safely swarming to her tribute, to pluck at the skirts of the Heaven-called.... What red flowers of passion she strews before him on the rocky, upland way; what songs of conquest she summons from the lower groves; with what romances does she stir his rest, all fragrant-lipped and splendor-eyed; what a Zion she rears of cloud and clay to hold his eyes from the Heights--are not all these written, aye, burned, into the history of Man? Who goes beyond? A valiant few.... If the enchantments fail to hold him, and if his clear eyes penetrate the illusions of sense; lo, the path grows steep and dark before him, and there are dragons in the way! The faith of the youth must be as Daniel’s now, which is tetanus for lions and palsy for every monster. He has not lingered with the lusts. Will he not falter before the fears? The many tarry in the tinsel gardens of sense; the few turn back before the roar of the Furies; the One--but who can tell how the bay-tree blooms for him, where glory waits?... The saddest part of all is, that those who are called and turn back, learn in the coolness of years how treacherous are the enchantments, and that never a dragon of the dark harmed a hair of Strongheart; but the way shines not so clear for a second journey, and the soul is hardened with skepticisms past responding to the Inner Voice. The man must be born again. Routledge sat in his old leathern chair and looked back a little sorrowfully upon the boy of twelve years ago, all clean from the dust of the world’s trails, uncalloused by war, sensitive to the spirit, stirring in the chrysalis of flesh, all lit with star-stuff!... If only he had known Noreen Cardinegh then!... He could look deeply within. He did not love the manner of man he saw in himself--a wanderer striding over the East; sitting down often for a year, in the places white men choose most ardently to avoid, and devoting himself (who dared look back wistfully now upon those beginnings of spiritual life) to the reddest ructions of Matter--war, red war. He shook his head bitterly, rose, and went to the window, looking down upon thronging Bookstalls with unseeing eyes. Out of it all came this at last: