“It isn’t even confectionery,” said he.  “It’s terra alba and cochineal.  And when it comes to the sensation, it will be benzine for whiskey.  Real things are bad enough, for the most part, in this world; but when it comes to sham fictions and adulterated poisons, Dorris, I’d rather help bake bread, if it were an honest loaf, or make strong shoes for laboring men!”

“You don’t always get things like that,” said Dorris.  “And you know you’re not responsible.  Why will you torment yourself so?”

“I was so determined not to do anything but genuine work; work that the world wanted; and to have it come down to this!”

“Only for a time, while you are waiting.”

“Yes; people must eat while they are waiting; that’s the—­devil of it!  I’m not swearing, Dorris, dear; it came truly into my head, that minute, about the Temptation in the Wilderness.”  Kenneth’s voice was reverent, saying this; and there was an earnest thought in his face.

“You’ll never like anything heartily but your Sunday work.”

“That’s what keeps me here.  My week-day work might be wanted somewhere else.  And perhaps I ought to go.  There’s Sunday work everywhere.”

“If you’ve found one half, hold on to it;” said Dorris.  “The other can’t be far off.”

“I suppose there are a score or two of young architects in this city, waiting for a name or a chance to make one, as I am.  If it isn’t here for all of them, somebody has got to quit.”

“And somebody has got to hold on,” repeated Dorris.  “You are morbid, Kent, about this ‘work of the world.’”

“It’s overdone, everywhere.  Fifth wheels trying to hitch on to every coach.  I’d rather be the one wheel of a barrow.”

“The Lord is Wheelwright, and Builder,” said Dorris, very simply.  “You are a wheel, and He has made you; He’ll find an axle for you and put you on; and you shall go about his business, so that you shall wonder to remember that you were ever leaning up against a wall.  Do you know, Kentie, life seems to me like the game we used to play at home in the twilight.  When we shut our eyes and let each other lead us, until we did not know where we were going, or in what place we should come out.  I should not care to walk up a broad path with my eyes wide open, now.  I’d rather feel the leading.  To-morrow always makes a turn.  It’s beautiful!  People don’t know, who never shut their eyes!”

Kenneth had taken up a newspaper.

“The pretenses at doing!  The dodges and go-betweens that make a sham work between every two real ones!  There’s hardly a true business carried on, and if there is, you don’t know where or which.  Look at the advertisements.  Why, they cheat with their very tops and faces!  See this man who puts in big capitals:  ’Lost! $5,000! $1,000 reward!’ and then tells you, in small type, that five thousand dollars are lost every year by breaking glass and china, that his cement will mend!  What business has he to cry ‘Wolf!’ to the hindrance of the next man who may have a real wolf to catch?  And what business has the printer, whom the next man will pay to advertise his loss, to help on a lie like this beforehand?  I’m only twenty-six years old, Dorris, and I’m getting ashamed of the world!”