“You see, White,” he said, with a kind of setting of the teeth, “this is the sort of thing one has to stand.  Life is imperfect.  Nothing can be done perfectly.  And on the whole—­” He spoke still more slowly, “I would go through again with the very same things that have hurt my people.  If I had to live over again.  I would try to do the things without hurting the people, but I would do the things anyhow.  Because I’m raw with remorse, it does not follow that on the whole I am not doing right.  Right doing isn’t balm.  If I could have contrived not to hurt these people as I have done, it would have been better, just as it would be better to win a battle without any killed or wounded.  I was clumsy with them and they suffered, I suffer for their suffering, but still I have to stick to the way I have taken.  One’s blunders are accidents.  If one thing is clearer than another it is that the world isn’t accident-proof. . . .

“But I wish I had sent those dollars to Prothero. . . .  God!  White, but I lie awake at night thinking of that messenger as he turned away. . . .  Trying to stop him. . . .

“I didn’t send those dollars.  So fifty or sixty people were killed and many wounded. . . .  There for all practical purposes the thing ends.  Perhaps it will serve to give me a little charity for some other fool’s haste and blundering. . . .

“I couldn’t help it, White.  I couldn’t help it. . . .

“The main thing, the impersonal thing, goes on.  One thinks, one learns, one adds one’s contribution of experience and understanding.  The spirit of the race goes on to light and comprehension.  In spite of accidents.  In spite of individual blundering.

“It would be absurd anyhow to suppose that nobility is so easy as to come slick and true on every occasion. . . .

“If one gives oneself to any long aim one must reckon with minor disasters.  This Research I undertook grows and grows.  I believe in it more and more.  The more it asks from me the more I give to it.  When I was a youngster I thought the thing I wanted was just round the corner.  I fancied I would find out the noble life in a year or two, just what it was, just where it took one, and for the rest of my life I would live it.  Finely.  But I am just one of a multitude of men, each one going a little wrong, each one achieving a little right.  And the noble life is a long, long way ahead. . . .  We are working out a new way of living for mankind, a new rule, a new conscience.  It’s no small job for all of us.  There must be lifetimes of building up and lifetimes of pulling down and trying again.  Hope and disappointments and much need for philosophy. . . .  I see myself now for the little workman I am upon this tremendous undertaking.  And all my life hereafter goes to serve it. . . .”

He turned his sombre eyes upon his friend.  He spoke with a grim enthusiasm.  “I’m a prig.  I’m a fanatic, White.  But I have something clear, something better worth going on with than any adventure of personal relationship could possibly be. . . .”