“Yes, it was vanity,” he said.  “A boy’s vanity.  For me—­anyhow.  I’m too two-sided....  Two-sided?...  Commonplace!

“Dreams like mine—­abilities like mine.  Yes—­any man!  And yet ...—­The things I meant to do!”

His thoughts went to his Socialism, to his red-hot ambition of world mending.  He marvelled at the vistas he had discovered since those days.

“Not for us—­Not for us.

“We must perish in the wilderness.—­Some day.  Somewhen.  But not for us....

“Come to think, it is all the Child.  The future is the Child.  The Future.  What are we—­any of us—­but servants or traitors to that?...

* * * * *

“Natural Selection—­it follows ... this way is happiness ... must be.  There can be no other.”

He sighed.  “To last a lifetime, that is.

“And yet—­it is almost as if Life had played me a trick—­promised so much—­given so little!...

“No!  One must not look at it in that way!  That will not do!  That will not do.

“Career!  In itself it is a career—­the most important career in the world.  Father!  Why should I want more?

“And ...  Ethel!  No wonder she seemed shallow ...  She has been shallow.  No wonder she was restless.  Unfulfilled ...  What had she to do?  She was drudge, she was toy ...

“Yes.  This is life.  This alone is life!  For this we were made and born.  All these other things—­all other things—­they are only a sort of play....

“Play!”

His eyes came back to the Schema.  His hands shifted to the opposite corner and he hesitated.  The vision of that arranged Career, that ordered sequence of work and successes, distinctions and yet further distinctions, rose brightly from the symbol.  Then he compressed his lips and tore the yellow sheet in half, tearing very deliberately.  He doubled the halves and tore again, doubled again very carefully and neatly until the Schema was torn into numberless little pieces.  With it he seemed to be tearing his past self.

“Play,” he whispered after a long silence.

“It is the end of adolescence,” he said; “the end of empty dreams....”

He became very still, his hands resting on the table, his eyes staring out of the blue oblong of the window.  The dwindling light gathered itself together and became a star.

He found he was still holding the torn fragments.  He stretched out his hand and dropped them into that new waste-paper basket Ethel had bought for him.

Two pieces fell outside the basket.  He stooped, picked them up, and put them carefully with their fellows.