“It is the illusion itself!  The boy chasing the rainbow is happier than the man counting his gold!”

“But what of that dreadful day of disenchantment when the illusion no longer deceives?”

“Ha! ha!  Why, just put on your mask and smile.  You can ‘make believe’ you are happy, can’t you?”

“I have got beyond that,” David answered savagely.  “I am not sitting for my picture to this great, grim artist friend of yours, who first sticks a knife into me, and then tells me to look pleasant that he may photograph me for his gallery of fools!  I am tired of shams and make-believes.  Life is a hideous mockery, and I say plainly that I loathe and abhor it!”

“Tush, tush, whatever else you do or do not do, keep sweet, David!  Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad!  You take yourself and your life too seriously, I tell you.  Everything will go its own way whether you want it to or not!  I used to read the classics, once, and some fragments of those old fellows’ sublime philosophy are still fresh in my memory.  There is a scrap in one of the Greek tragedies—­the Oedipus, I think, that has always kept running through my head: 

     “’Why should we fear, when Chance rules everything,
     And foresight of the future there is none? 
     ’Tis best to live at random as we can! 
     But thou, fear not that marriage with thy mother! 
     Many, ere now, have dreamed of things like this,
     But who cares least about them, bears life best!’

“There is wisdom for you!  ‘Who cares least about them bears life best!’ It’s my philosophy in a nut-shell.”

“Look here, Mantel,” said David, “your philosophy may be all right, provided a man has not done a—­provided—­provided a man has not committed a-a crime!  I don’t care anything about your past in detail; but unless you have done some deed that hangs around your neck like a mill-stone, you don’t know anything about the subject you are discussing.”

Mantel dropped his eyes, and sat in silence.  For the first time since David had known him, his fine face gave some genuine revelation of the emotions of his soul.  Great tears gathered in his eyes, and his lips trembled.  In a moment, he arose, took his hat, laid his hand gently upon the arm of his friend, and said “David, my dear fellow, we are skating on that thin ice again.  We shall fall through if we are not careful, and get that chill you were talking about.  Let’s go out and take a walk.  Life is too deep for either you or me to fathom.  I gave it up as a bad job long ago.  What you just said about having a knife stuck into you comes the nearest to my own notion.  I feel a good deal as I fancy a butterfly must when he has been intercepted in a gay and joyous flight and stuck against the wall with a sharp pin, among a million other specimens which the great entomologist has gathered for some purpose which no one but himself can understand.  All I try to do is to smile enough to cover up my contortions.  Come, let us go.  We need the air.”