"Huh!"--the doctor was feeling too deeply to be conscious of the rudeness in the scoff. "So you figure it out like that--do you? And you get some satisfaction out of that way of looking at it? The scheme of things is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight, weakness--carelessness--whatever you choose to call it. Well, I don't think I care much about a system that fixes its penalties in that particular way. When I see men every day who violate every natural law and don't pay any heavier penalty than an inconvenience, when I see useless pieces of flesh and bone slapping nature in the face and not getting more than a mild little slap in return, and then when I see the biggest, most useful man I have ever known paying as a penalty his life's work--oh Lord--that's rot! I have some hymn singing ancestors myself, and they left me a tendency to want to believe in something or other, so I had fine notions about the economy of nature--poetry of science. But this makes rather a joke of that, too--don't you think?" He paused, and Georgia could see the hot beating in his temples and his throat. And then he added, with a quiet more unanswerable than the passion had been: "So the beautiful thing about having no gods at all is that you're so fixed you have no gods to lose." The telephone rang then, and there was a sharp fire of questions ending with, "Yes--I'll see her before nine to-night." He hung up the receiver and sat there a minute in deep thought, seeming to concentrate his whole being upon this patient now commanding him. And then he turned to Hastings with something about the boy out at the university, telling him at the last not to worry about the financial end of it, that he liked to do things for students who amounted to something. Professor Hastings was smiling a little as he walked down the corridor. He wondered why Dr. Parkman cared anything about slaving for so senseless and unsatisfying a world. He loved the doctor for his inconsistencies. CHAPTER XXII A BLIND MAN'S TWILIGHT "Ready?" "All ready." "Then, one--two--three--we're off!" A laugh and a scamper and one grand rush down to the back fence. "You go too fast," she laughed, gasping for breath. "And you're not steady. You jerk." "But this was a fine straight row. I can steer it just right when you don't push too hard. Now--back." They always had a great deal of fun cutting the grass. Ernestine used to wish the grass had to be cut every day. But Karl did not seem to be enjoying it as much as usual to-day. "I'm going to desert you," he said, after a little while. "Lazy man!" "Yes--lazy good for nothing man--leaves all the work for his wife." She looked at him sharply. His voice sounded very tired. "I'll be in in just a few minutes, dear," she said. She did not go with him. She knew Karl liked to find his own way just as much as he could. She understood far too well to do any unnecessary "helping."