“You have taken a big contract,” said Philip, smiling at her enthusiasm.  “Don’t you intend to go on with medicine?”

“Certainly.  At least far enough to be of some use in breaking up people’s ignorance about their own bodies.  Half the physical as well as moral misery comes from ignorance.  Didn’t I always tell you that I want to know?  A good many of my associates pretend to be agnostics, neither believe or disbelieve in anything.  The further I go the more I am convinced that there is a positive basis for things.  They talk about the religion of humanity.  I tell you, Philip, that humanity is pretty poor stuff to build a religion on.”

The talk was wandering far away from what was in Philip’s mind, and presently Celia perceived his want of interest.

“There, that is enough about myself.  I want to know all about you, your visit to Rivervale, how the publishing house suits you, how the story is growing.”

And Philip talked about himself, and the rumors in Wall Street, and Mr. Ault and his offer, and at last about the Mavicks—­he could not help that—­until he felt that Celia was what she had always been to him, and when he went away he held her hand and said what a dear, sweet friend she was.

And when he had gone, Celia sat a long time by the window, not seeing much of the hot street into which she looked, until there were tears in her eyes.

XXIV

There was one man in New York who thoroughly enjoyed the summer.  Murad Ault was, as we say of a man who is free to indulge his natural powers, in his element.  There are ingenious people who think that if the ordering of nature had been left to them, they could maintain moral conditions, or at least restore a disturbed equilibrium, without violence, without calling in the aid of cyclones and of uncontrollable electric displays, in order to clear the air.  There are people also who hold that the moral atmosphere of the world does not require the occasional intervention of Murad Ault.

The conceit is flattering to human nature, but it is not borne out by the performance of human nature in what is called the business world, which is in such intimate alliance with the social world in such great centres of conflict as London, New York, or Chicago.  Mr. Ault is everywhere an integral and necessary part of the prevailing system—­that is, the system by which the moral law is applied to business.  The system, perhaps, cannot be defended, but it cannot be explained without Mr. Ault.  We may argue that such a man is a disturber of trade, of legitimate operations, of the fairest speculations, but when we see how uniform he is as a phenomenon, we begin to be convinced that he is somehow indispensable to the system itself.  We cannot exactly understand why a cyclone should pick up a peaceful village in Nebraska and deposit it in Kansas, where there, is already enough of that sort, but we cannot conceive of Wall Street continuing to be Wall Street unless it were now and then visited by a powerful adjuster like Mr. Ault.