for the first time , ralph felt a kind of pity for the little bald doctors , and understood the central irony of their lives : they were aware that the short-timers whose existences they had been sent to prune lived powerful inner lives , but they did not in the least comprehend the reality of those lives , the emotions which drove them , which of the actions-sometimes noble , sometimes foolish suited-mr. c. and mr. l. had studied their short-time charges as certain rich but timid englishmen had studied the maps brought back by the explorers of the victorian age , explorers who had in many cases been funded by these same rich but timid men .