lived a larger life in health I could have done more. But some

day perhaps you will be able to put a body that is wrong
altogether right again. Your science is only beginning. It's a

subtler thing than physics and chemistry, and it takes longer to
produce its miracles. And meanwhile a few more of us must die in

patience.'
'Fine work is being done and much of it,' said Fowler. 'I can

say as much because I have nothing to do with it. I can
understand a lesson, appreciate the discoveries of abler men and

use my hands, but those others, Pigou, Masterton, Lie, and the
others, they are clearing the ground fast for the knowledge to

come. Have you had time to follow their work?'
Karenin shook his head. 'But I can imagine the scope of it,' he

said.
'We have so many men working now,' said Fowler. 'I suppose at

present there must be at least a thousand thinking hard,
observing, experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen

hundred.'
'Not counting those who keep the records?'

'Not counting those. Of course, the present indexing of research
is in itself a very big work, and it is only now that we are

getting it properly done. But already we are feeling the benefit
of that. Since it ceased to be a paid employment and became a

devotion we have had only those people who obeyed the call of an
aptitude at work upon these things. Here--I must show you it

to-day, because it will interest you--we have our copy of the
encyclopaedic index--every week sheets are taken out and replaced

by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to us by the
aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is an index of

knowledge that grows continually, an index that becomes
continually truer. There was never anything like it before.'

'When I came into the education committee,' said Karenin, 'that
index of human knowledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had

produced a chaotic mountain of results, in a hundred languages
and a thousand different types of publication. . . .' He smiled

at his memories. 'How we groaned at the job!'
'Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall

see.'
'I have been so busy with my own work----Yes, I shall be glad to

see.'
The patient regarded the surgeon for a time with interested eyes.

'You work here always?' he asked abruptly.
'No,' said Fowler.

'But mostly you work here?'
'I have worked about seven years out of the past ten. At times I

go away--down there. One has to. At least I have to. There is a
sort of grayness comes over all this, one feels hungry for life,

real, personal passionate life, love-making, eating and drinking
for the fun of the thing, jostling crowds, having adventures,

laughter--above all laughter----'
'Yes,' said Karenin understandingly.

'And then one day, suddenly one thinks of these high mountains
again....'

'That is how I would have lived, if it had not been for
my--defects,' said Karenin. 'Nobody knows but those who have

borne it the exasperation of abnormality. It will be good when
you have nobody alive whose body cannot live the wholesome

everyday life, whose spirit cannot come up into these high places
as it wills.'

'We shall manage that soon,' said Fowler.
'For endless generations man has struggled upward against the

indignities of his body--and the indignities of his soul. Pains,
incapacities, vile fears, black moods, despairs. How well I've

known them. They've taken more time than all your holidays. It
is true, is it not, that every man is something of a cripple and

something of a beast? I've dipped a little deeper than most;
that's all. It's only now when he has fully learnt the truth of

that, that he can take hold of himself to be neither beast nor
cripple. Now that he overcomes his servitude to his body, he can

for the first time think of living the full life of his body....
Before another generation dies you'll have the thing in hand.

You'll do as you please with the old Adam and all the vestiges
from the brutes and reptiles that lurk in his body and spirit.

Isn't that so?'
'You put it boldly,' said Fowler.

Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution.... 'When,' asked
Karenin suddenly, 'when will you operate?'

'The day after to-morrow,' said Fowler. 'For a day I want you to
drink and eat as I shall prescribe. And you may think and talk

as you please.'
'I should like to see this place.'

'You shall go through it this afternoon. I will have two men
carry you in a litter. And to-morrow you shall lie out upon the

terrace. Our mountains here are the most beautiful in the
world....'

Section 3
The next morning Karenin got up early and watched the sun rise

over the mountains, and breakfasted lightly, and then young
Gardener, his secretary, came to consult him upon the spending of

his day. Would he care to see people? Or was this gnawing pain
within him too much to permit him to do that?

'I'd like to talk,' said Karenin. 'There must be all sorts of
lively-minded people here. Let them come and gossip with me. It

will distract me--and I can't tell you how interesting it makes
everything that is going on to have seen the dawn of one's own

last day.'
'Your last day!'

'Fowler will kill me.'
'But he thinks not.'

'Fowler will kill me. If he does not he will not leave very much
of me. So that this is my last day anyhow, the days afterwards if

they come at all to me, will be refuse. I know....'
Gardener was about to speak when Karenin went on again.

'I hope he kills me, Gardener. Don't be--old-fashioned. The
thing I am most afraid of is that last rag of life. I may just go

on--a scarred salvage of suffering stuff. And then--all the
things I have hidden and kept down or discounted or set right

afterwards will get the better of me. I shall be peevish. I may
lose my grip upon my own egotism. It's never been a very firm

grip. No, no, Gardener, don't say that! You know better, you've
had glimpses of it. Suppose I came through on the other side of

this affair, belittled, vain, and spiteful, using the prestige I
have got among men by my good work in the past just to serve some

small invalid purpose....'
He was silent for a time, watching the mists among the distant

precipices change to clouds of light, and drift and dissolve
before the searching rays of the sunrise.

'Yes,' he said at last, 'I am afraid of these anaesthetics and
these fag ends of life. It's life we are all afraid of.

Death!--nobody minds just death. Fowler is clever--but some day
surgery will know its duty better and not be so anxious just to

save something . . . provided only that it quivers. I've tried to
hold my end up properly and do my work. After Fowler has done

with me I am certain I shall be unfit for work--and what else is
there for me? . . . I know I shall not be fit for work....

'I do not see why life should be judged by its last trailing