That last with a sneer, and he stopped with an ugly laugh. "They make me tired--those people who have so much to say about the world being so right and lovely. They might travel with me on my rounds for a day or two. One day would finish a good deal of this factory-made optimism." "Does Dr. Hubers feel--as you do?" Hastings asked, not quite concealing the anxiety in the question. "How in God's name could he feel any other way?--though it's hard making him out,"--turning to Georgia, who nodded understandingly. "Just when he's ready to let himself go he'll pull himself together and say it's so nice to have plenty of time for reading, that Ernestine has been reading a lot of great things to him this summer, and he believes now he is really going to begin to get an education. But does _that_ make you feel any better about it? God!--I was out there the other day, and when I saw the grey hairs in his head, the lines this summer has put in his face, when I saw he was digging his finger nails down into his hands to keep himself together while he talked to me about turning his cancer work over to some other man--I tell you it went just a little beyond my power to endure, and I turned in then and there and expressed my opinion of a God who would permit such things to happen! And then what did he do? Got a little white around the lips for a minute, looked for just a second as though he were going to turn in with me, and then he smiled a little and said in a quiet, rather humorous way that made me feel about ten years old: 'Oh, leave God out of it, Parkman. I don't think he had much of a hand in this piece of work. If you must damn something, damn my own carelessness.'" "He said that? He can see it like that?"--there was no mistaking the approval in Professor Hastings' eager voice.