"Ye-es; it’s like—like a country into which I’m traveling—not with my body—see?—but with my _self_. No," he corrected, "that’s not it. It isn’t a country; it’s more like a life. Oh, shucks! I haven’t got it straight yet. Now look! This is the way it is. Suppose that everything we see was alive—that these chairs were alive, and the walls, and the table—that every blamed thing we ever touch or use was alive, and had a voice. See?" Bob nodded that he saw. "Now, suppose every voice was trying to make you understand things. The table would say, ’This is the way God wants you to work’; and the chair, ’This is the way God wants you to rest’; and the walls, ’This is the way God stands round you and backs you up.’ Everything would be helping you then, instead of putting itself dead against you the way we have it here." "I get the idea; but would that be God?" Over this question the boy’s face brooded thoughtfully. "It mightn’t be God in the way that you’re you and I’m me. It would be more like a way of _knowing_ God. It’s like my case in the courts. It’s set down as ’The People against Edward S. Follett.’ But I don’t see the People; I only feel what they do to me. It’s something like that. I don’t see God; but I kind of feel—" He broke with another apologetic laugh. "Oh, I guess it’s all wrong. Gussie’d call me a gump. It just kind of gets you; that’s all. It makes me feel as if I was moving on into something—but I guess I’m not." The pensive silence that followed was broken by Bob’s saying: "That’s what I mean by instinct." Teddy resumed as if he hadn’t heard. "When I wake up in the night—and waking up in the night in that place, with snores and groans and guys talking in their sleep and having nightmares, is some stunt, believe _me_—but when I do, it’s just as if I had great big arms round me, and some one was saying: ’All right, Teddy, I’m holding you. Keep a stiff upper lip. I’ll make it as easy as I can for you and everyone else. I’m just drawing you—drawing you—drawing you—a wee little bit at a time—over here, where you’ll get your big chance.’ What’s more, Bob," he went on, as if he touched on the heart of his interest, "it says it’ll take care of Flynn and his wife and his poor little kiddies, and do the things—" Once more he broke off with his uneasy laugh. "Ah, what’s the use? You think I’m a quitter, don’t you?" "Why should I think that?" "Oh, I don’t know. I talk like a quitter. But it isn’t that. If I could still do anything for ma and the girls—" "I’m looking after them, old boy." "So there you are. What’d be the good of my staying?" He added, between clenched teeth, "God, how I’d hate to go back!" "Back into the world?"