Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/114

 be ourselves. Whatever it is, if we admit that it belongs to us, we need it to complete ourselves.

No! No! Gunnar cried in torment. I won't believe that! The shadow of torture fell athwart his countenance. Do you think we can get no help from outside?

Yes, that is what I think, that is what I know, that we can hope for no help from outside. . . unless, she qualified this statement, perhaps there may be those who utilize the people they encounter as mirrors. There are times, she went on, when I watch another act, or hear another speak, when I feel at once that this is some hitherto unsuspected part of myself that I have forgotten, or possibly never known about before at all.

Gunnar was making an effort to pull himself together. As she watched him erase the shadow from his face, quickly her mind reverted to Magdalen Roberts and her pamphlet on. The Importance of the Façade. At last, he spoke: Well, possibly the desire to work is a part of Paul that he has forgotten or else never known about.

Campaspe smiled. I doubt that, she said.

If I could believe what you say, Gunnar went on in a kind of reverie, I think it might satisfy me to be like every one else.

But my belief depends on the premise that each of us is a different individual.

Each of us is God, Gunnar asserted with deter-