For thirty years the world for Paul had been a bazaar stocked with covetable objects. But by the time he reached Paris the counters had lost their fascination. The youthful Minas had been wont to acquire recklessly, then discard, one by one, articles which proved worthless; the mature Minas took only what he was tolerably sure he needed.
He had reached the point where a man rests on his oars, partly because his youthful vigour has subsided, partly because he finds the elusive reflections in the water more arresting than continual change of solid landscape, partly because he is curious to observe how other oarsmen will pull through stretches that have tested him. In Paris he found no lack of contemporaries at grips with issues which he had already settled for himself. Everywhere he met youth who reminded him of himself a few years back, youths who were peering into odd corners in a restless search for their souls. Many were on false scents; nearly all were doomed to find a soul of smaller dimensions than they had taken for granted; some, soul-searching because it seemed to be the clever thing to do, were doomed to find nothing.
Paul watched this game with a sort of tutelary interest. When he offered corroboration and encouragement, the searcher redounded in tributes to his insight; when he adversely criticized, the searcher cried, "But you don't understand!" In either case, when the egoistic possibil-
