"
"Then you don't believe there is a Destiny that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will?" Lawanne said lightly.
Doris shook her head.
"Destiny is only a word. It means one thing to one person, something
else to another. It's too abstract to account for anything. Life's a
puzzle no one ever solves, because the factors are never constant.
When we try to account for this and that we find no fixed law, nothing
but what is subject to the element of chance--which can't be reckoned.
Most of us at different times hold our own fate, temporarily at least,
in our own hands without knowing it, and some insignificant happening
does this or that to us. If we had done something else it would all be
different."
"Your wife," Lawanne observed to Hollister, "is quite a philosopher."
Hollister nodded. He was thinking of this factor of chance. He himself
had been a victim of it. He had profited by it. And he wondered what
vagaries of chance were still to bestow happiness or inflict suffering
upon him in spite of his most earnest effort to achieve mastery over
circumstances.
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