To Sharlee the exhibit seemed surprisingly formidable, but the wonder in her eyes was not at that.  Her marvel was for the fact that the man who was capable of so cruelly elbowing little Fifi out of his way should be counted a follower of the tenderest and most human of sciences.

“They impress me,” she said, returning his envelope; “but not as better than friends.”

“Ah?  A matter of taste.  Now—­”

“I had always supposed,” continued the girl, looking at him, “that sociology had a close relation with life—­in fact, that it was based on a conscious recognition of—­the brotherhood of man.”

“Your supposition is doubtless sound, though you express it so loosely.”

“Yet you feel that the sociologist has no such relation?”

He glanced up sharply.  At the subtly hostile look in her eyes, his expression became, for the first time, a little interested.

“How do you deduce that?”

“Oh!...  It is loose, if you like—­but I deduce it from what you have said—­and implied—­about your father and—­having friends.”

But what she thought of, most of all, was the case of Fifi.

She stood across the table, facing him, looking down at him; and there was a faintly heightened color in her cheeks.  Her eyes were the clearest lapis lazuli, heavily fringed with lashes which were blacker than Egypt’s night.  Her chin was finely and strongly cut; almost a masculine chin, but unmasculinely softened by the sweetness of her mouth.

Mr. Queed eyed her with some impatience through his round spectacles.

“You apparently jumble together the theory and what you take to be the application of a science in the attempt to make an impossible unit.  Hence your curious confusion.  Theory and application are as totally distinct as the poles.  The few must discover for the many to use.  My own task—­since the matter appears to interest you—­is to work out the laws of human society for those who come after to practice and apply.”

“And suppose those who come after feel the same unwillingness to practice and apply that you, let us say, feel?”

“It becomes the business of government to persuade them.”

“And if government shirks also?  What is government but the common expression of masses of individuals very much like yourself?”

“There you return, you see, to your fundamental error.  There are very few individuals in the least like me.  I happen to be writing a book of great importance, not to myself merely, but to posterity.  If I fail to finish my book, if I am delayed in finishing it, I can hardly doubt that the world will be the loser.  This is not a task like organizing a prolonged search for one’s father, or dawdling with friends, which a million men can do equally well.  I alone can write my book.  Perhaps you now grasp my duty of concentrating all my time and energy on this single work and ruthlessly eliminating whatever interferes with it.”