The girl found his incredible egoism at once amusing and extremely exasperating.

“Have you ever thought,” she asked, “that thousands of other self-absorbed men have considered their own particular work of supreme importance, and that most of them have been—­mistaken?”

“Really I have nothing to do with other men’s mistakes.  I am responsible only for my own.”

“And that is why it is a temptation to suggest that conceivably you had made one here.”

“But you find difficulty in suggesting such a thought convincingly?  That is because I have not conceivably made any such mistake.  A Harvey must discover the theory of the circulation of the blood; it is the business of lesser men to apply the discovery to practical ends.  It takes a Whitney to invent the cotton gin, but the dullest negro roustabout can operate it.  Why multiply illustrations of a truism?  Theory, you perceive, calls for other and higher gifts than application.  The man who can formulate the eternal laws of social evolution can safely leave it to others to put his laws into practice.”

Sharlee gazed at him in silence, and he returned her gaze, his face wearing a look of the rankest complacence that she had ever seen upon a human countenance.  But all at once his eyes fell upon his watch, and his brow clouded.

“Meantime,” he went on abruptly, “there remains the question of my board.”

“Yes....  Do I understand that you—­derive your living from these social laws that you write up for others to practice?”

“Oh, no—­impossible!  There is no living to be made there.  When my book comes out there may be a different story, but that is two years and ten months off.  Every minute taken from it for the making of money is, as you may now understand, decidedly unfortunate.  Still,” he added depressedly, “I must arrange to earn something, I suppose, since my father’s assistance is so problematical.  I worked for money in New York, for awhile.”

“Oh—­did you?”

“Yes, I helped a lady write a thesaurus.”

“Oh....”

“It was a mere fad with her.  I virtually wrote the work for her and charged her five dollars an hour.”  He looked at her narrowly.  “Do you happen to know of any one here who wants work of that sort done?”

The agent did not answer.  By a series of covert glances she had been trying to learn, upside down, what it was that Mr. Queed was reading.  “Sociology,” she had easily picked out, but the chapter heading, on the opposite page, was more troublesome, and, deeply absorbed, she had now just succeeded in deciphering it.  The particular division of his subject in which Mr. Queed was so much engrossed was called “Man’s Duty to His Neighbors.”

Struck by the silence, Sharlee looked up with a small start, and the faintest possible blush.  “I beg your pardon?”

“I asked if you knew of any lady here, a wealthy one, who would like to write a thesaurus as a fad.”