For some time after that there was silence in the room, a silence so profound that the ticking of Frank Morrow’s watch sounded loud as a grandfather’s clock.
At last Frank Morrow wheeled about in his chair and spoke.
“You know, Miss Lucile,” he said slowly, “I am no longer a child, except in spirit. I have read a great deal. I have thought a great deal, sitting alone in this chair, both by day and by night. Very often I have thought of us, of the whole human race, of our relation to the world, to the being who created us and to one another.
“I have come to think of life like this,” he said, his eyes kindling. “It may seem a rather gloomy philosophy of life, but when you think of it, it’s a mighty friendly one. I think of the whole human race as being on a huge raft in mid-ocean. There’s food and water enough for everyone if all of us are saving, careful and kind. Not one of us knows how we came on the raft. No one knows whither we are bound. From time to time we hear the distant waves break on some shore, but what shore we cannot tell. The earth, of course, is our raft and the rest of the universe our sea.
“What’s the answer to all this? Just this much: Since we are so situated, the greatest, best thing, the thing that will bring us the greatest amount of real happiness, is to be kind to all, especially those weaker than ourselves, just as we would if we were adrift on a raft in the Atlantic.
“Without all this philosophy, you have caught the spirit of the thing. I can’t advise you. I can only offer to assist you in any way you may suggest. It’s a strange case. The old man is doubtless a crank. Many book collectors are. It may be, however, that there is some stronger hand back of it all. The girl appears to be the old man’s devoted slave and is too young truly to understand right from wrong. I should say, however, that she is clever far beyond her years.”
Lucile left the shop strengthened and encouraged. She had not found a solution to her problem but had been told by one much older and wiser than she that she was not going at the affair in the wrong way. She had received his assurance of his assistance at any time when it seemed needed.
That night a strange thing happened. Lucile had learned by repeated experience that very often the solution of life’s perplexing problems comes to us when we are farthest from them and engaged in work or pursuit of pleasure which is most remote from them. Someone had given her a ticket to the opera. Being a lover of music, she had decided to abandon her work and the pursuit of the all-absorbing mystery, to forget herself listening to outbursts of enchanting song.
The outcome had been all that she might hope for. Lost in the great swells of music which came to her from hundreds of voices or enchanted by the range and beauty of a single voice, she forgot all until the last curtain had been called and the crowd thronged out.
There was a flush on her cheek and new light in her eyes as she felt the cool outer air of the street.