gave to crime the joy of its plunder as it gave the wild beast the joy of its prey? And if Man were merely a higher animal, why were these animals not brutally happy in their dens?
It was an experience of life for which Don's books had not prepared him. It was a lesson from life itself, and not the colourless argument of a theory of life. And confused by the thousand changing incidents that repeated the question incessantly around him, touched in his sympathies and revolted in his ideals, he went about his "boosting" as if bewildered by the noises of the street, staring and distracted.
Tower did not come on that second afternoon to see him "started," and he worked alone, without any smiling companionship to disguise from him the hypocrisy of his employment. He finished, that day, with a shame of it all which prevented him from telling his room-mates what he had been doing; but he returned to it, on the morrow, in the loyal expectation of seeing Tower; and he continued secretly at his post, day after day, because he could not find any other work to do, and because he felt himself bound in gratitude to Tower to avail himself of the opportunity which he owed to his fellow-countryman. The sights which he saw did, as Tower had promised, put him "wise to a lot of life"; but they had the first effect of driving him in on himself as they would turn a nun to her prayers. The hot and unclean street reminded him—by contrast—of the fir-trees and the underbrush and the rustling coolness of his woods; and he took refuge in the memory of these. The women of the pavements, whom he saw
