the wall, and on him an inscription had been carved: "Here lies a solid character. Requiescat in pace."
AT JUST about this point, one may predict with considerable assurance either that nothing at all will happen, or that something like a miracle will happen. Let us assume the more enlivening of the two possibilities. As Brown looks dismally out from the barred small window of his character upon his life, and sees that it is finished, suddenly his past breaks away from him, as Sicily broke away from Italy, and a gulf yawns between. His past is no longer his; it has become a part of human history. It has become a dramatic spectacle. Sitting in the box of his character, he regards it, as it were, across footlights, with spectatorial detachment. He can re-examine it now without shame or vanity or repentance. It interests him no longer as conduct waiting for the Judgment Day but as food for intellectual and aesthetic curiosity. He wheels a
