that's worth all the rest, and you make me remember it. There's something in me that could almost be a nun, if it got the chanst. But you can't give up being a successful artiste to be a bum nun! If I could only be like you and have a thing called a destiny instead of a Broadway career—Gee!"
"You can have a destiny, Gritty. The highest aim anyone can have is to share the destiny of the race. If you go on being generous and playing fair you will be keeping your candle burning and adding to the piteously inadequate enlightenment of this naughty world. The tragedy of it is, there are gigantic waterfalls of intelligence which might be used to generate enlightenment, but the world prefers its dark corners. . . . Oh, Gritty, life is so boundlessly potential. We could be gods and goddesses, if we knew what to do with our energies. Instead of which we snarl and haggle and lie and cheat and show off. We go round in circles instead of going straight forward, and then have the ignorance and cheek to claim intelligence! As an old carpenter on my first ship used to say, 'men are more stoopid as animals.'"
Gritty's eyes dwelt on him trustingly, compassionately. He read some sort of vague inquiry in her glance, and it made him doubt himself.
"One feels lost at times," he said, with bowed shoulders, "and futile—like some dotty grandsire mumbling in a corner."
"Why don't you be a writer?" Gritty asked.
The question startled him. He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No, I can't do it that way."
"Do what?"
"I mean I can't deliver my message by writing. I shouldn't know how to drive it home with a pen. I've got to do it by impressing people with whom I come in contact."
"Oh, but that's so vague—and inglorious."
