He had seen too many fail under stress.
But he liked this man. They sat outside after supper and Doris joined
them there. Lawanne was not talkative. He was given to long silences
in which he sat with eyes fixed on river or valley or the hills above,
in mute appreciation.
"Do you people realize what a panoramic beauty is here before your
eyes all the time?" he asked once. "It's like a fairyland to me. I
must see a lot of this country before I go away. And I came here quite
by chance."
"Which is, after all, the way nearly everything happens," Doris said.
"Oh," Lawanne turned to her, "You think so? You don't perceive the
Great Design, the Perfect Plan, in all that we do?"
"Do you?" she asked.
He laughed.
"No. If I did I should sit down with folded hands, knowing myself
helpless in the inexorable grip of destiny. I should always be
perfectly passive."
"If you tried to do that you could not remain passive long. The
unreckonable element of chance would still operate to make you do this
or that. You couldn't escape it; nobody can.
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