That was no longer meant for him, Lester reflected, as he struggled with the fatiguing, humiliating problem of getting himself dressed without help. He had spent years in falling, falling, falling,--and, tiring of it, had fallen once for all,--fallen all anybody could fall, so completely that there was no more to say about it. That job was done. With a straining pull on his arms, he managed to swing and claw himself into his wheel chair, and sat quiet for a moment to get his breath. Whoever would think that dead human legs could be so infernally hard to get from one place to another! They seemed to weigh more than all the rest of his body put together, he thought, as he lifted one with both hands and changed it to an easier position. He sat panting, losing for an instant his firmly held self-control, succumbing to what was always near the surface, a shamed horror of his mutilated, strengthless body. It came upon him that day with such poisonous violence that he was alarmed and aroused himself to resist. “The thing to remember,” he told himself sternly and contemptuously, “is that it concerns only me, and what concerns me is not of the slightest importance. I’m done for, was really done for, long ago. Nothing that can happen to me matters now.” He heard as if it were a wistful voice saying, “But neither parted roads, nor cent per cent May starve quite out the child that lives in us, The Child that is the Man, the Mystery.” And he replied bitterly to this, “That’s all you know about it! Cent per cent can starve it dead, dead! It turned the trick for me, all right.” “Well, no funeral orations over it anyhow,” he told himself. “If it got starved, that’s a sign it deserved to starve, that it didn’t have the necessary pep to hustle around and get its food. “All that can be annihilated must be annihilated That the children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery.” But he knew that he did not really believe this clean, trenchant ruthlessness, and cursed himself out for the sniveling sentimentality which he could not kill. * * * * * Then Stephen turned over and opened his eyes. Why, there was Father up and dressed already! He scrambled hastily to his knees, “You didn’t lace your shoes, did you?” he cried roughly and threateningly. That was a service to Father which he had taken for his very own. He would have killed Henry or Helen if they had dared to do it. “No, old man, I didn’t lace my shoes,” said Father, smiling at him, “for the very good reason that I can’t. I couldn’t get along without the services of my valet.” Stephen looked relieved, slid out of bed, sat down on the floor and began to pull the laces up. Once he looked up at his father and smiled. He loved to do this for Father.