affairs?  By to-morrow they would be at each other’s throats, squabbling, cheating, slandering, lying, fighting desperately to gain some ephemeral advantage—­all under the eye of the magnificent guerdon they pretended to believe in and knew they were jeopardizing by such acts.  No, it was pure self-hypnosis.  Weak man demanded offsets for his earthly woes, and he had concocted them in a world of his own imagining.  That was the history of man’s religions; the concoction of other-worldly offsets for worldly woes.  In their heart of hearts, all knew that they were concoctions, and the haruspices laughed when they met each other.

Supper was early at Mrs. Paynter’s, as though to atone for the tardiness of yesterday.  The boarders dispatched it not without recurring cheerfulness, broken now and again by fits of decorous silence.  You could see that by to-morrow, or it might be next day, the house would be back in its normal swing again.

Mr. Queed withdrew to his little chamber.  He trod the steps softly for once, and perhaps this was why, as he passed Mrs. Paynter’s room, his usually engrossed ear caught the sound of weeping, quiet but unrestrained, ceaseless, racking weeping, running on evermore, the weeping of Rachel for her children, who would not be comforted.

The little Doctor shut the door of the Scriptorium and lit the gas.  So far, his custom; but here his whim and his wont parted.  Instead of seating himself at his table, where the bound Post for January-March, 1902, awaited his exploration, he laid himself down on his tiny bed.

If he were to die to-night, who would weep for him like that?

The thought had come unbidden to his mind and stuck in his metaphysics like a burr.  Now he remembered that the question was not entirely a new one.  Fifi had once asked him who would be sorry if he died, and had answered herself by saying that she would.  However, Fifi was dead, and therefore released from her promise.

Yes, Fifi was dead.  He would never help her with her algebra again.  The thought filled him with vague, unaccountable regrets.  He felt that he would willingly take twenty minutes a night from the wrecked Schedule to have her come back, but unfortunately there was no way of arranging that now.  He remembered the night he had sent Fifi out of the dining-room for coughing, and the remembrance made him distinctly uncomfortable.  He rather wished that he had told Fifi he was sorry about that, but it was too late now.  Still he had told her that he was her friend; he was glad to remember that.  But here, from a new point of view, was the trouble about having friends.  They took your time while they lived, and then they went off and died and upset your evening’s work.