It was in this mental ferment that, one day, idly seating himself at the table where Betty had wrought, and brooding there, Noll put out his hand to one of the small brass knobs of the writing-table, and opened a little drawer. It was fragrant with the atmosphere of freshness and life and sweetness which was a part of her winsome being. It brought the witchery of her brown hair to him, her dainty ways, the beautiful firm gentle hands, the white skin that flushed so easily, the eager loyal lips, the courageous will, the happy eyes, the cheerfulness and gaiety of her glad young womanhood.
In the opened drawer lay what looked like the final proofs of the chapter of a book—or had she torn the pages from some magazine?
He read the Fragment from The Masterfolk: which ran:
“Rid thyself of the pessimistic error that confuses Life with Lust. The duel between the lust of the emotions and the contemplation of Reason is but in the seeming, as the right hand is against the left. The emotions and the reason but hedge in the highway of thy wayfaring to guide the instincts of life along the way to the highest fulfilment. Joy urges life forward to the achieving; pain turns aside from danger; and the reason is the eye of the emotions. Bereft of reason, the emotions are blind; and the blind in soul are not of the Masterfolk.
Good and evil are not at duel; these twain are not rigid and separate realities taking sides in a quarrel of the universe; good is the way by which life travels to the achieving of the highest experience; evil is that way by which life falls away from the achieving.
There is no other good nor evil....”
When Noll laid down the Fragment of The Masterfolk, the evening was well spent.
He went to the window and gazed down through the damp night upon the smoke and flare of Paris that steamed in the reek. His mind turned to the busy world at his feet....
As he pulled on his coat, he noticed that there were two volumes in the pockets. He laughed. They were the wisdom of Schopenhauer—of the refuge from life in art and of the refuge from life in asceticism.
He left them there.