“Why yes, those spiritual aspirations you mention.”

“Unless by that time the world’s such an economic machine it doesn’t want spiritual aspirations.”

“Well Heaven help the working man that’s got them in the present economic machine,” said Ferguson a little impatiently.

She, too, moved impatiently.  “Oh I don’t know a thing about it.  It’s absurd for me to be talking about it.”

“Why I don’t think it’s at all absurd, only I don’t think you see the thing clear to the end, and I wish you could talk to somebody who sees farther than I do.  I’m new to it myself.  Now there’s a man doing a lot of boat repairing up here above the Island.  I wish you could talk to him.  He’d know just what you mean, and just how to meet you.”

“Oh, would he?” said Katie.  “What’s his name?”

“Mann.  Alan Mann.”

“Why, Katie,” laughed Wayne, “it must be that he’s that same mythical creature known as the man who mends the boats.”

“Yes,” said Katie, “I fancy he’s the very same mythical creature.”

“My little boy talks about him,” Wayne explained.

“Yes, he’s the same one.  I’ve seen him talking to your little boy and one of the soldiers.  He’s a queer genius.”

“In what way is he a queer genius?” asked Katie.

“Why—­I don’t know.  He’s always got a way of looking at a thing that you hadn’t seen yourself.”  He looked up with a little smile from the tool he was trying to adjust.  “I’d like to have you tell him you were worrying about socialism hurting spiritual aspirations.”

“Would he annihilate me?”

“No, he wouldn’t want to annihilate you, if he thought you were trying to find out about things.  He’d guide you.”

“Oh—­so he’s a guide, is he?  Is he a spiritual or an economic guide?” she laughed.

“I think he might combine them,” he replied, laughing too.

“He must be remarkable,” said Kate.

“He is remarkable, Miss Jones,” gravely replied the admirer of the man who mended the boats.  “I wish you could have heard him talking to a crowd of men last Sunday.”

“Dear me—­is he a public speaker?”

“Yes—­in a way.  And he writes things.”

Katie wanted to ask what things, but they were cut short by the entrance of Captain Prescott.  It was curious how his entrance did cut them short.  She smiled to herself, wondering what he would have thought of the conversation.

He followed her to the door and inquired for Miss Forrest.  His manner was constrained, but his eyes were begging for an explanation.  He looked unhappy, and Katie hurried away from him.  It seemed she could not bear to have any more unhappiness come pressing against her, even the unhappiness she was confident would pass away.

In her mood of that day it seemed to Katie that the affairs of the world were too involved for any one to have a solution for them.  Life surged in too fiercely—­too uncontrollably—­to be contained within a formula.