If we contemplate our neighbour’s life with that calm indifference to his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse themselves with toys.  Most lives are marked by a series of events, a long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events.  In some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.

A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin.  He will then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them.  The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in him.  Thus the gods—­with men.

Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise.  His life, set down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers good reading nowadays.  It would have illustrated to perfection; for it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these incidents—­as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly part—­with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half of his being.  He had always known what he wanted, and had usually accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which is necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes.  The gods had not helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good, and often better.  And in human aid this applies as well, which that domestic goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.

The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings.  But now, without apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him that gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the sex of this arbiter of human story.

Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of wanting too much.  For the present he was content with the desire to avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty.  And this he was not allowed to do.  Two days after the meeting at the Mokotow—­the morning following the visit paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l’Europe—­Cartoner was early astir.  He drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train, and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at ten minutes past eight.  He took his ticket amid a crowd of peasants—­wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women in gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.