gather honey."

"A bee," Guion observed, "isn't the product of a high and complex
civilization--"

"Neither am I," Davenant declared, with a big laugh. "I spring from the
primitive stratum of people born to work, who expect to work, and who,
when they don't work, have no particular object in living on."

"And so you've come back to Boston to work?"

"To work--or something."

"You leave yourself, I see, the latitude of--something."

"Only because it's better than nothing. It's been nothing for so long
now that I'm willing to make it anything."

"Make what--anything?"

"My excuse for remaining on earth. If I'm to go on doing that, I've got
to have something more to justify it than the mere ability to pay my
hotel bill."

"You're luckier than you know to be able to do that much," Guion said,
with one of his abrupt, nervous changes of position. "But you've been
uncommonly lucky, anyhow, haven't you? Made some money out of that mine
business, didn't you? Or was it in sugar?"

Davenant laughed. "A little," he admitted. "But, to any one like you,