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 that is to go on as I began, just crawling along like a tortoise, colliding into everything sooner or later. By the time I'm eighty I may have learned something and got somewhere. If not I'll just stumble into my grave, and on my tombstone they can write, 'Poor devil, he meant well'."

Miriam had been laughing at the funny aspect of his misery, but her smile became grim. "That isn't a bad epitaph. I wish I could be sure that I'll be entitled to one as good."

Keble glanced at her curiously. "You're morbid, Miriam. I don't wonder, with the monotony of our life here."

"No," she corrected, despite the tyrant. "The life here has done more than anything to cure me of morbidness. Although, to tell the truth, I wasn't conscious of the morbid streak in me until after I'd been here for a while." To herself Miriam explained the matter with the help of a photographic metaphor: Keble's personality had been a solution which brought out an alluring but reprehensible image on the negative of her heart; Louise's character had been a solution which had gradually brought out a series of surrounding images which threw the reprehensible image into the right proportion, subordinating it to the background without in any way dimming it. Miriam was now forced to admit that one overture on Keble's part, one token of a tyrant within him that reciprocated the desire of