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Page 26
Don't you remember how splendid he was the day he had just finished
something? He seemed to have passed out of himself into a shining
humility. It was said of Shelley: _"Sun-treader!"_... Don't you remember?
ROGER
Yes.... Oh hang it! Why couldn't he have been only that! Yes, I remember.
I hoped that six months or so at the office--but no. Anyhow, it's all over
now.
MARGARET
What were you going to say?
ROGER
I suppose I might as well say it: I don't believe the office would have
changed him, after all. That is, permanently. He'd have done his best for
a while, and then--. No, nothing could help him.
MARGARET
Is that what you have made up your mind about?
ROGER
Oh, that. Yes, that's what started me thinking. Everybody has
difficulties, troubles, and I believe in helping a fellow every time. Life
piles up too high against one sometimes, but a little shove from the other
side will move it away. I never believed in the devil take the hindmost,
at all. But this was different.
MARGARET
Different, how? What do you mean?
ROGER
I mean that as long as a fellow's difficulties are outside him you can
help him, because as soon as they are removed he's himself again; but when
they are inside, part of the man himself, there's nothing you can do.
Nothing. You can save a person from the world, but not from himself.
That's where the devil comes in. I see it now. I believe in the devil.
MARGARET
Oh! But _Arthur_....
ROGER
I know you think I'm a brute for speaking of Arthur in connection with the
devil, but it wasn't the old-fashioned devil I meant. I meant the devil of
unfitness. Arthur wasn't _fit_. He had every chance. We can't get away
from what life is. Life shoves people to the wall every day. I've had to
fight hard myself. I admit things aren't fair all round, but Arthur had
his chance, two or three chances, and he just--dropped out. He couldn't
_survive_. And it seems to me that for those who loved him it may be a
good thing after all that he didn't have to go on.
MARGARET
Roger! You shan't say that! You shan't!
ROGER
I don't want to, Margaret, but that's what life itself says. We can't get
behind life. We can't beat evolution and the law of survival.
MARGARET
But his talent, his fine talent--and his exquisite nature!
ROGER
I know. But there it is. It's kinder in the long run to be cruel, if the
truth is cruel. We've got to be true to things as they are.
MARGARET
But take things as they are! He wasn't vicious about--about women, he was
like a child. Of course they got his money, but even so, they weren't all
mere schemers. Some of them were very decent. Why, one of them--
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