Part 22

"Debritt didn't know, himself; but I know now: it's the primitive man-soul; the 'I' that is able to refuse to be bound down and tied by environment or habit or petty conventions, or any of the things we misname 'limitations.' It's asleep in most of us; it was asleep in me. You made it sit up and rub its eyes for a minute or two that evening in Guthrieville, but it dozed off again, and there had to be an earthquake at the last to shake it alive. Do you know the first thing it did when it took hold and began to drive?"

"No."

"Here is where the law of chances falls to pieces, Corona. Without telling me anything about it, this newly emancipated man-soul of mine made a bee-line for the only Absolute Ego woman it had ever known. And it found her."

Again the young woman laughed happily. "If you are going to call me names, Ego-man, you'll have to make it up to me some other way," she said.

Whereupon, the moment being strictly elemental and sacred to demonstrations of the absolute, he did.

THE END

* * * * *

BOOKS BY FRANCIS LYNDE

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

The Real Man. Illus.

The City of Numbered Days. Illus.

The Honorable Senator Sage-brush.

Scientific Sprague. Illus.

The Price.

The Taming of Red Butte Western.

The King of Arcadia. Illus.

A Romance In Transit.