Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/294

270 He had heard many a sleek pastor discourse glibly upon the eternal justice of Providence. Then he believed it cant with a smattering of truth. Now it was entirely clear that it was cant—but false; a pleasant lie like the housewife tale of fairies.

Carper took the cigar from between his teeth and dropped it on the hearth. The game of life was an ugly game. He confessed that he had lost interest in its play. Now that the thought suggested he saw that he had been losing interest all along. It was inertia he had been fighting—the plague of inertia, and for no gain at all. It was a world where, if one sat still, one wasted with monotony; and if one labored, it was only for the purpose of building ships to fly in the air, which, when they were all completed, sat stupidly on the earth or by hap toppled heavily upon the builder, crushing out his heart. He could not understand why men had sometimes said that life was good.

Carper had looked, he believed, into not a few chambers of the temple. The same hooded shape sat in each. If fame was