“You may be an authority on editorial writing—­even on manhood—­life.  But I can hardly recognize you in that capacity as regards sociology.”

Sharlee made no reply.  She had no idea that the young man’s dismissal from the Post had been a crucifixion to him, an unendurable infamy upon his virginal pride of intellect.  She had no conception of his powers of self-control, which happened to be far greater than her own, and she would have given worlds to know what he was thinking at that moment.  For her part she was thinking of him, intensely, and in a personal way.  Manners he had none, but where did he get his manner?  Who had taught him to bow in that way?  He had mentioned insults:  where had he heard of insults, this stray who had raised himself in the house of a drunken policeman?

“Well,” said Queed, with the utmost calmness, “you might tell me, in a word, why you think I am a failure as a sociologist.”

“You are a failure as a sociologist,” said Sharlee, immediately, “for the same reason as both your other failures:  you are wholly out of relation with real life.  Sociology is the science of human society.  You know absolutely nothing about human society, except what other men have found out and written down in text-books.  You say that you are an evolutionary sociologist.  Yet a wonderful demonstration in social evolution is going on all around you, and you don’t even know it.  You are standing here directly between two civilizations.  On the one side there are Colonel Cowles and my old grandmother—­mother of your landlady, plucky dear!  On the other there are our splendid young men, men who, with traditions of leisure and cultured idleness in their blood, have pitched in with their hands and heads to make this State hum, and will soon be meeting and beating your Northern young men at every turn.  On one side there is the old slaveholding aristocracy; on the other the finest Democracy in the world; and here and now human society is evolving from one thing to the other.  A real sociologist would be absorbed in watching this marvelous process:  social evolution actually surprised in her workshop.  But you—­I doubt if you even knew it was going on.  A tremendous social drama is being acted out under your very window and you yawn and pull down the blind.”

There was a brief silence.  In the course of it the door-bell was heard to ring; soon the door opened; a masculine murmur; then the maid Mary’s voice, clearly:  “Yassuh, she’s in....  Won’t you rest your coat, Mr. West?”

Mary entered the little back parlor, a card upon a tray.  “Please draw the folding doors,” said Sharlee.  “Say that I’ll be in in a few minutes.”

They were alone once more, she and the little Doctor; the silence enfolded them again; and she broke it by saying the last word she had to say.

“I have gone into detail because I wanted to make the unfavorable impression you produce upon your little world clear to you, for once.  But I can sum up all that I have said in less than six words.  If you remember anything at all that I have said, I wish you would remember this.  Mr. Queed, you are afflicted with a fatal malady.  Your cosmos is all Ego.”