offal, and because you are not quite a dog you do not like the smell of
your own hide."

In turn my voice became shrill. "You blind fool," I cried impatiently.
"Men like you are fools. You cannot go along that road. It is given to
no man to venture far along the road of lives."

I became passionately in earnest. "The illness you pretend to cure is
the universal illness," I said. "The thing you want to do cannot be
done. Fool--do you expect love to be understood?"

We stood in the road and looked at each other. The suggestion of a
sneer played about the corners of his mouth. He put a hand on my
shoulder and shook me. "How smart we are--how aptly we put things!"

He spat the words out and then turned and walked a little away. "You
think you understand, but you don't understand," he cried. "What you
say can't be done can be done. You're a liar. You cannot be so definite
without missing something vague and fine. You miss the whole point. The
lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked
by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by
dead men. I am myself covered by crawling creeping vines that choke
me."

He laughed bitterly. "And that's why I want to run and play," he said.
"I want to be a leaf blown by the wind over hills. I want to die and be
born again, and I am only a tree covered with vines and slowly dying. I
am, you see, weary and want to be made clean. I am an amateur venturing
timidly into lives," he concluded. "I am weary and want to be made
clean. I am covered by creeping crawling things."