In a world we ought to rule. . . .
"Amanda, we've got to get to work. . . ."
That was his first display of this new mood, which presently became
a common one. He was less and less content to let the happy hours
slip by, more and more sensitive to the reminders in giant ruin and
deserted cell, in a chance encounter with a string of guns and
soldiers on their way to manoeuvres or in the sight of a stale
newspaper, of a great world process going on in which he was now
playing no part at all. And a curious irritability manifested
itself more and more plainly, whenever human pettiness obtruded upon
his attention, whenever some trivial dishonesty, some manifest
slovenliness, some spiritless failure, a cheating waiter or a
wayside beggar brought before him the shiftless, selfish, aimless
elements in humanity that war against the great dream of life made
glorious. "Accursed things," he would say, as he flung some
importunate cripple at a church door a ten-centime piece; "why were
they born? Why do they consent to live? They are no better than
some chance fungus that is because it must.
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