A FAR COUNTRY

By Winston Churchill

BOOK 3. 

XVIII. 

As the name of our city grew to be more and more a byword for sudden andfabulous wealth, not only were the Huns and the Slavs, the Czechs and theGreeks drawn to us, but it became the fashion for distinguishedEnglishmen and Frenchmen and sometimes Germans and Italians to pay us avisit when they made the grand tour of America. They had been told thatthey must not miss us; scarcely a week went by in our community--so itwas said--in which a full-fledged millionaire was not turned out. Ourvisitors did not always remain a week, --since their rapid journeyingsfrom the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the Gulf rarely occupiedmore than four, --but in the books embodying their mature comments on themanners, customs and crudities of American civilization no less than achapter was usually devoted to us; and most of the adjectives in theirvarious languages were exhausted in the attempt to prove how symptomaticwe were of the ambitions and ideals of the Republic. The fact that manyof these gentlemen--literary and otherwise--returned to their own shoresbetter fed and with larger balances in the banks than when they departedis neither here nor there. Egyptians are proverbially created to bespoiled. 

The wiser and more fortunate of these travellers and students of lifebrought letters to Mr. And Mrs. Hambleton Durrett. That household wassymptomatic--if they liked--of the new order of things; and it was rareindeed when both members of it were at home to entertain them. If Mr. Durrett were in the city, and they did not happen to be Britons withsporting proclivities, they simply were not entertained: when Mrs. Durrett received them dinners were given in their honour on the Durrettgold plate, and they spent cosey and delightful hours conversing with herin the little salon overlooking the garden, to return to their hotels andjot down paragraphs on the superiority of the American women over themen. These particular foreigners did not lay eyes on Mr. Durrett, who wasin Florida or in the East playing polo or engaged in some other pursuit. One result of the lavishness and luxury that amazed them they wrote--hadbeen to raise the standard of culture of the women, who were our leisureclass. But the travellers did not remain long enough to arrive at anyconclusions of value on the effect of luxury and lavishness on the sacredinstitution of marriage. 

If Mr. Nathaniel Durrett could have returned to his native city afterfifteen years or so in the grave, not the least of the phenomena tostartle him would have been that which was taking place in his own house. For he would have beheld serenely established in that former abode ofCalvinism one of the most reprehensible of exotic abominations, a'mariage de convenance;' nor could he have failed to observe, moreover, the complacency with which the descendants of his friends, the pewholders in Dr. Pound's church, regarded the matter: and not only these, but the city at large. The stronghold of Scotch Presbyterianism hadbecome a London or a Paris, a Gomorrah!

Mrs. Hambleton Durrett went her way, and Mr. Durrett his. The less saidabout Mr. Durrett's way--even in this suddenly advanced age--the better. As for Nancy, she seemed to the distant eye to be walking through life ina stately and triumphant manner. I read in the newspapers of her doings, her comings and goings; sometimes she was away for months together, oftenabroad; and when she was at home I saw her, but infrequently, underconditions more or less formal. Not that she was formal, --or I: ourintercourse seemed eloquent of an intimacy in a tantalizing state ofsuspense. Would that intimacy ever be renewed? This was a question onwhich I sometimes speculated. The situation that had suspended or put anend to it, as the case might be, was never referred to by either of us. 

One afternoon in the late winter of the year following that in which wehad given a dinner to the Scherers (where the Durretts had rathermarvellously appeared together) I left my office about three o'clock--amost unusual occurrence. I was restless, unable to fix my mind on mywork, filled with unsatisfied yearnings the object of which I sought tokeep vague, and yet I directed my steps westward along Boyne Street untilI came to the Art Museum, where a loan exhibition was being held. Ientered, bought a catalogue, and presently found myself standing beforenumber 103, designated as a portrait of Mrs. Hambleton Durrett, --paintedin Paris the autumn before by a Polish artist then much in vogue, Stanislaus Czesky. Nancy--was it Nancy?--was standing facing me, tall, superb in the maturity of her beauty, with one hand resting on an antiquetable, a smile upon her lips, a gentle mockery in her eyes as thoughlaughing at the world she adorned. With the smile and themockery--somehow significant, too, of an achieved inaccessibility--wentthe sheen of her clinging gown and the glint of the heavy pearls droopingfrom her high throat to her waist. These caught the eye, but failed atlength to hold it, for even as I looked the smile faded, the mockeryturned to wistfulness. So I thought, and looked again--to see thewistfulness: the smile had gone, the pearls seemed heavier. Was it atrick of the artist? had he seen what I saw, or thought I saw? or was itthat imagination which by now I might have learned to suspect anddistrust. Wild longings took possession of me, for the portrait hadseemed to emphasize at once how distant now she was from me, and yet hownear! I wanted to put that nearness to the test. Had she really changed?did anyone really change? and had I not been a fool to accept thepresentment she had given me? I remembered those moments when our glanceshad met as across barriers in flashes of understanding. After all, thebarriers were mere relics of the superstition of the past. What if I wentto her now? I felt that I needed her as I never had needed anyone in allmy life. .. . I was aroused by the sound of lowered voices beside me. 

"That's Mrs. Hambleton Durrett, " I heard a woman say. "Isn't shebeautiful?"

The note of envy struck me sharply--horribly. Without waiting to listento the comment of her companion I hurried out of the building into thecold, white sunlight that threw into bold relief the mediocre houses ofthe street. Here was everyday life, but the portrait had suggested thatwhich might have been--might be yet. What did I mean by this? I didn'tknow, I didn't care to define it, --a renewal of her friendship, of ourintimacy. My being cried out for it, and in the world in which I lived wetook what we wanted--why not this? And yet for an instant I stood on thesidewalk to discover that in new situations I was still subject tounaccountable qualms of that thing I had been taught to call"conscience"; whether it were conscience or not must be left to thepsychologists. I was married--terrible word! the shadow of thatInstitution fell athwart me as the sun went under a cloud; but the suncame out again as I found myself walking toward the Durrett housereflecting that numbers of married men called on Nancy, and that what Ihad in mind in regard to her was nothing that the court would havepronounced an infringement upon the Institution. .. . I reached her steps, the long steps still guarded by the curved wrought-iron railingsreminiscent of Nathaniel's day, though the "portals" were gone, a modernvestibule having replaced them; I rang the bell; the butler, flung openthe doors. He, at any rate, did not seem surprised to see me here, hegreeted me with respectful cordiality and led me, as a favoured guest, through the big drawing-room into the salon. 

"Mr. Paret, Madam!"

Nancy, rose quickly from the low chair where she sat cutting the pages ofa French novel. 

"Hugh!" she exclaimed. "I'm out if anyone calls. Bring tea, " she added tothe man, who retired. For a moment we stood gazing at each other, questioningly. "Well, won't you sit down and stay awhile?" she asked. 

I took a chair on the opposite side of the fire. 

"I just thought I'd drop in, " I said. 

"I am flattered, " said Nancy, "that a person so affaire should find timeto call on an old friend. Why, I thought you never left your office untilseven o'clock. "

"I don't, as a rule, but to-day I wasn't particularly busy, and I thoughtI'd go round to the Art Museum and look at your portrait. "

"More flattery! Hugh, you're getting quite human. What do you think ofit?"

"I like it. I think it quite remarkable. "

"Have a cigarette!"

I took one. 

"So you really like it, " she said. 

"Don't you?"

"Oh, I think it's a trifle--romantic, " she replied "But that's Czesky. Hemade me quite cross, --the feminine presentation of America, the spoiledwoman who has shed responsibilities and is beginning to have aglimpse--just a little one--of the emptiness of it all. "

I was stirred. 

"Then why do you accept it, if it isn't you?" I demanded. "One doesn'trefuse Czesky's canvases, " she replied. "And what difference does itmake? It amused him, and he was fairly subtle about it. Only those whoare looking for romance, like you, are able to guess what he meant, andthey would think they saw it anyway, even if he had painted me--extinct. "

"Extinct!" I repeated. 

She laughed. 

"Hugh, you're a silly old goose!"

"That's why I came here, I think, to be told so, " I said. 

Tea was brought in. A sense of at-homeness stole over me, --I was more athome here in this room with Nancy, than in any other place in the world;here, where everything was at once soothing yet stimulating, expressiveof her, even the smaller objects that caught my eye, --the crystalinkstand tipped with gold, the racks for the table books, herpaper-cutter. Nancy's was a discriminating luxury. And her talk! Thelightness with which she touched life, the unexplored depths of her, guessed at but never fathomed! Did she feel a little the need of me as Ifelt the need of her?

"Why, I believe you're incurably romantic, Hugh, " she said laughingly, when the men had left the room. "Here you are, what they call a paragonof success, a future senator, Ambassador to England. I hear of thoseremarkable things you have done--even in New York the other day a man wasasking me if I knew Mr. Paret, and spoke of you as one of the coming men. I suppose you will be moving there, soon. A practical success! It alwayssurprises me when I think of it, I find it difficult to remember what adreamer you were and here you turn out to be still a dreamer! Have youdiscovered, too, the emptiness of it all?" she inquired provokingly. "Imust say you don't look it"--she gave me a critical, quizzicalglance--"you look quite prosperous and contented, as though you enjoyedyour power. "

I laughed uneasily. 

"And then, " she continued, "and then one day when your luncheon hasdisagreed with you--you walk into a gallery and see a portrait of--of anold friend for whom in youth, when you were a dreamer, you professed asentimental attachment, and you exclaim that the artist is a discerningman who has discovered the secret that she has guarded so closely. She'ssorry that she ever tried to console herself with baubles it's whatyou've suspected all along. But you'll just run around to see foryourself--to be sure of it. " And she handed me my tea. "Come now, confess. Where are your wits--I hear you don't lack them in court. "

"Well, " I said, "if that amuses you--"

"It does amuse me, " said Nancy, twining her fingers across her knee andregarding me smilingly, with parted lips, "it amuses me a lot--it's socharacteristic. "

"But it's not true, it's unjust, " I protested vigorously, smiling, too, because the attack was so characteristic of her. 

"What then?" she demanded. 

"Well, in the first place, my luncheon didn't disagree with me. It neverdoes. "

She laughed. "But the sentiment--come now--the sentiment? Do you perceiveany hint of emptiness--despair?"

Our chairs were very close, and she leaned forward a little. 

"Emptiness or no emptiness, " I said a little tremulously, "I know that Ihaven't been so contented, so happy for a long time. "

She sat very still, but turned her gaze on the fire. 

"You really wouldn't want to find that, Hugh, " she said in another voice, at which I exclaimed. "No, I'm not being sentimental. But, to be serious, I really shouldn't care to think that of you. I'd like to think of you asa friend--a good friend--although we don't see very much of one another. "

"But that's why I came, Nancy, " I explained. "It wasn't just animpulse--that is, I've been thinking of you a great deal, all along. Imiss you, I miss the way you look at things--your point of view. I can'tsee any reason why we shouldn't see something of each other--now--"

She continued to stare into the fire. 

"No, " she said at length, "I suppose there isn't any reason. " Her moodseemed suddenly to change as she bent over and extinguished the flameunder the kettle. "After all, " she added gaily, "we live in a tolerantage, we've reached the years of discretion, and we're both tooconventional to do anything silly--even if we wanted to--which we don't. We're neither of us likely to quarrel with the world as it is, I think, and we might as well make fun of it together. We'll begin with ourfriends. What do you think of Mr. Scherer's palace?"

"I hear you're building it for him. "

"I told him to get Eyre, " said Nancy, laughingly, "I was afraid he'drepeat the Gallatin Park monstrosity on a larger scale, and Eyre's theonly man in this country who understands the French. It's been ratheramusing, " she went on, "I've had to fight Hilda, and she's no meanantagonist. How she hates me! She wanted a monstrosity, of course, amodernized German rock-grotto sort of an affair, I can imagine. She'sbeen so funny when I've met her at dinner. 'I understand you take a greatinterest in the house, Mrs. Durrett. ' Can't you hear her?"

"Well, you did get ahead of her, " I said. 

"I had to. I couldn't let our first citizen build a modern Rhine castle, could I? I have some public spirit left. And besides, I expect to buildon Grant Avenue myself. "

"And leave here?"

"Oh, it's too grubby, it's in the slums, " said Nancy. "But I really oweyou a debt of gratitude, Hugh, for the Scherers. "

"I'm told Adolf's lost his head over you. "

"It's not only over me, but over everything. He's so ridiculously proudof being on the board of the Children's Hospital. .. . You ought to hearhim talking to old Mrs. Ogilvy, who of course can't get used to him atall, --she always has the air of inquiring what he's doing in that galley. She still thinks of him as Mr. Durrett's foreman. "

The time flew. Her presence was like a bracing, tingling atmosphere inwhich I felt revived and exhilarated, self-restored. For Nancy did notquestion--she took me as I was. We looked out on the world, as it were, from the same window, and I could not help thinking that ours, after all, was a large view. The topics didn't matter--our conversation was fragrantwith intimacy; and we were so close to each other it seemed incrediblethat we ever should be parted again. At last the little clock on themantel chimed an hour, she started and looked up. 

"Why, it's seven, Hugh!" she exclaimed, rising. "I'd no idea it was solate, and I'm dining with the Dickinsons. I've only just time to dress. "

"It's been like a reunion, hasn't it?--a reunion after many years, " Isaid. I held her hand unconsciously--she seemed to be drawing me to her, I thought she swayed, and a sudden dizziness seized me. Then she drewaway abruptly, with a little cry. I couldn't be sure about the cry, whether I heard it or not, a note was struck in the very depths of me. 

"Come in again, " she said, "whenever you're not too busy. " And a minutelater I found myself on the street. 

This was the beginning of a new intimacy with Nancy, resembling the oldintimacy yet differing from it. The emotional note of our parting on theoccasion I have just related was not again struck, and when I wenteagerly to see her again a few days later I was conscious oflimitations, --not too conscious: the freedom she offered and which Igladly accepted was a large freedom, nor am I quite sure that even Iwould have wished it larger, though there were naturally moments when Ithought so: when I asked myself what I did wish, I found no answer. Though I sometimes chafed, it would have been absurd of me to object to acertain timidity or caution I began to perceive in her that had beenabsent in the old Nancy; but the old Nancy had ceased to exist, and hereinstead was a highly developed, highly specialized creature in whom Idelighted; and after taking thought I would not have robbed her of fineacquired attribute. As she had truly observed, we were both conventional;conventionality was part of the price we had willingly paid formembership in that rarer world we had both achieved. It was a world, tobe sure, in which we were rapidly learning to take the law into our ownhands without seeming to defy it, in order that the fear of it mightremain in those less fortunately placed and endowed: we had begun withthe appropriation of the material property of our fellow-citizens, whichwe took legally; from this point it was, of course, merely a logical stepto take--legally, too other gentlemen's human property--their wives, inshort: the more progressive East had set us our example, but as yet wehad been chary to follow it. 

About this time rebellious voices were beginning to make themselves heardin the literary wilderness proclaiming liberty--liberty of the sexes. There were Russian novels and French novels, and pioneer English novelspreaching liberty with Nietzschean stridency, or taking it for granted. Ipicked these up on Nancy's table. 

"Reading them?" she said, in answer to my query. "Of course I'm readingthem. I want to know what these clever people are thinking, even if Idon't always agree with them, and you ought to read them too. It's quitetrue what foreigners say about our men, --that they live in a groove, thatthey haven't any range of conversation. "

"I'm quite willing to be educated, " I replied. "I haven't a doubt that Ineed it. "

She was leaning back in her chair, her hands behind her head, a postureshe often assumed. She looked up at me amusedly. 

"I'll acknowledge that you're more teachable than most of them, " shesaid. "Do you know, Hugh, sometimes you puzzle me greatly. When you arehere and we're talking together I can never think of you as you are outin the world, fighting for power--and getting it. I suppose it's part ofyour charm, that there is that side of you, but I never consciouslyrealize it. You're what they call a dual personality. "

"That's a pretty hard name!" I exclaimed. 

She laughed. 

"I can't help it--you are. Oh, not disagreeably so, quitenormally--that's the odd thing about you. Sometimes I believe that youwere made for something different, that in spite of your success you havemissed your 'metier. '"

"What ought I to have been?"

"How can I tell? A Goethe, perhaps--a Goethe smothered by atwentieth-century environment. Your love of adventure isn't dead, it'sbeen merely misdirected, real adventure, I mean, forth faring, strayinginto unknown paths. Perhaps you haven't yet found yourself. "

"How uncanny!" I said, stirred and startled. 

"You have a taste for literature, you know, though you've buried it. Giveme Turgeniev. We'll begin with him. .. . "

Her reading and the talks that followed it were exciting, amazinglystimulating. .. . Once Nancy gave me an amusing account of a debate whichhad taken place in the newly organized woman's discussion club to whichshe belonged over a rather daring book by an English novelist. Mrs. Dickinson had revolted. 

"No, she wasn't really shocked, not in the way she thought she was, " saidNancy, in answer to a query of mine. 

"How was she shocked, then?"

"As you and I are shocked. "

"But I'm not shocked, " I protested. 

"Oh, yes, you are, and so am I--not on the moral side, nor is it themoral aspect that troubles Lula Dickinson. She thinks it's the moralaspect, but it's really the revolutionary aspect, the menace to thoseprecious institutions from which we derive our privileges and comforts. "

I considered this, and laughed. 

"What's the use of being a humbug about it, " said Nancy. 

"But you're talking like a revolutionary, " I said. 

"I may be talking like one, but I'm not one. I once had the makings ofone--of a good one, --a 'proper' one, as the English would say. " Shesighed. 

"You regret it?" I asked curiously. 

"Of course I regret it!" she cried. "What woman worth her salt doesn'tregret it, doesn't want to live, even if she has to suffer for it? Andthose people--the revolutionaries, I mean, the rebels--they live, they'rethe only ones who do live. The rest of us degenerate in a painlessparalysis we think of as pleasure. Look at me! I'm incapable ofcommitting a single original act, even though I might conceive one. Well, there was a time when I should have been equal to anything and wouldn'thave cared a--a damn. "

I believed her. .. . 

I fell into the habit of dropping in on Nancy at least twice a week on myway from the office, and I met her occasionally at other houses. I didnot tell Maude of that first impulsive visit; but one evening a few weekslater she asked me where I had been, and when I told her she made nocomment. I came presently to the conclusion that this renewed intimacydid not trouble her--which was what I wished to believe. Of course I hadgone to Nancy for a stimulation I failed to get at home, and it is themore extraordinary, therefore, that I did not become more discontentedand restless: I suppose this was because I had grown to regard marriageas most of the world regarded it, as something inevitable and humdrum, asa kind of habit it is useless to try to shake off. But life is so full ofcomplexities and anomalies that I still had a real affection for Maude, and I liked her the more because she didn't expect too much of me, andbecause she didn't complain of my friendship with Nancy although I shouldvehemently have denied there was anything to complain of. I respectedMaude. If she was not a squaw, she performed religiously the traditionalsquaw duties, and made me comfortable: and the fact that we livedseparate mental existences did not trouble me because I never thought ofhers--or even that she had one. She had the children, and they seemed tosuffice. She never renewed her appeal for my confidence, and I forgotthat she had made it. 

Nevertheless I always felt a tug at my heartstrings when June came aroundand it was time for her and the children to go to Mattapoisett for thesummer; when I accompanied them, on the evening of their departure, tothe smoky, noisy station and saw deposited in the sleeping-car theirluggage and shawls and bundles. They always took the evening train toBoston; it was the best. Tom and Susan were invariably there with candyand toys to see them off--if Susan and her children had not alreadygone--and at such moments my heart warmed to Tom. And I was astonished asI clung to Matthew and Moreton and little Biddy at the affection thatwelled up within me, saddened when I kissed Maude good-bye. She too wassad, and always seemed to feel compunctions for deserting me. 

"I feel so selfish in leaving you all alone!" she would say. "If itweren't for the children--they need the sea air. But I know you don'tmiss me as I miss you. A man doesn't, I suppose. .. . Please don't work sohard, and promise me you'll come on and stay a long time. You can if youwant to. We shan't starve. " She smiled. "That nice room, which is yours, at the southeast corner, is always waiting for you. And you do like thesea, and seeing the sail-boats in the morning. "

I felt an emptiness when the train pulled out. I did love my family, after all! I would go back to the deserted house, and I could not bear tolook in at the nursery door, at the little beds with covers flung overthem. Why couldn't I appreciate these joys when I had them?

One evening, as we went home in an open street-car together, after such adeparture, Tom blurted out:--"Hugh, I believe I care for your family asmuch as for my own. I often wonder if you realize how wonderful thesechildren are! My boys are just plain ruffians--although I think they'repretty decent ruffians, but Matthew has a mind--he's thoughtful--and animagination. He'll make a name for himself some day if he's steeredproperly and allowed to develop naturally. Moreton's more like my boys. And as for Chickabiddy!--" words failed him. 

I put my hand on his knee. I actually loved him again as I had loved andyearned for him as a child, --he was so human, so dependable. And whycouldn't this feeling last? He disapproved--foolishly, I thought--of myprofessional career, and this was only one of his limitations. But I knewthat he was loyal. Why hadn't I been able to breathe and be reasonablyhappy in that atmosphere of friendship and love in which I had beenplaced--or rather in which I had placed myself?. .. . Before the summer wasa day or two older I had grown accustomed to being alone, and enjoyed theliberty; and when Maude and the children returned in the autumn, similarly, it took me some days to get used to the restrictions imposedby a household. I run the risk of shocking those who read this bydeclaring that if my family had been taken permanently out of my life, Ishould not long have missed them. But on the whole, in those years mymarriage relation might be called a negative one. There were moments, asI have described, when I warmed to Maude, moments when I felt somethingakin to a violent antagonism aroused by little mannerisms and tricks shehad. The fact that we got along as well as we did was probably due to theorthodox teaching with which we had been inoculated, --to the effect thatmatrimony was a moral trial, a shaking-down process. But moral trialswere ceasing to appeal to people, and more and more of them were refusingto be shaken down. We didn't cut the Gordian knot, but we managed toloosen it considerably. 

I have spoken of a new species of titans who inhabited the giantbuildings in Wall Street, New York, and fought among themselves forpossession of the United States of America. It is interesting to notethat in these struggles a certain chivalry was observed among thecombatants, no matter how bitter the rivalry: for instance, it was deemedvery bad form for one of the groups of combatants to take the public intotheir confidence; cities were upset and stirred to the core by theseconflicts, and the citizens never knew who was doing the fighting, butimagined that some burning issue was at stake that concerned them. As amatter of fact the issue always did concern them, but not in the way theysupposed. 

Gradually, out of the chaotic melee in which these titans were engagedhad emerged one group more powerful than the rest and more respectable, whose leader was the Personality to whom I have before referred. He andhis group had managed to gain control of certain conservative fortressesin various cities such as the Corn National Bank and the AshuelaTelephone Company--to mention two of many: Adolf Scherer was his ally, and the Boyne Iron Works, Limited, was soon to be merged by him into agreater corporation still. Leonard Dickinson might be called his localgovernor-general. We manned the parapets and kept our ears constantly tothe ground to listen for the rumble of attacks; but sometimes they burstupon us fiercely and suddenly, without warning. Such was the assault onthe Ashuela, which for years had exercised an apparently secure monopolyof the city's telephone service, which had been able to ignore withcomplacency the shrillest protests of unreasonable subscribers. Throughthe Pilot it was announced to the public that certain benevolent "Easterncapitalists" were ready to rescue them from their thraldom if the citywould grant them a franchise. Mr. Lawler, the disinterestedness of whosenewspaper could not be doubted, fanned the flame day by day, sent hisreporters about the city gathering instances of the haughty neglect ofthe Ashuela, proclaiming its instruments antiquated compared with thoseused in more progressive cities, as compared with the very latestinventions which the Automatic Company was ready to install provided theycould get their franchise. And the prices! These, too, would fall--undercompetition. It was a clever campaign. If the city would give them afranchise, that Automatic Company--so well named! would provide automaticinstruments. Each subscriber, by means of a numerical disk, could call upany other, subscriber; there would be no central operator, no listening, no tapping of wires; the number of calls would be unlimited. As a proofof the confidence of these Eastern gentlemen in our city, they werewilling to spend five millions, and present more than six hundredtelephones free to the city departments! What was fairer, more generousthan this! There could be no doubt that popular enthusiasm was enlistedin behalf of the "Eastern Capitalists, " who were made to appear in thelight of Crusaders ready to rescue a groaning people from the thrall ofmonopoly. The excitement approached that of a presidential election, andbecame the dominant topic at quick-lunch counters and in street-cars. Cheap and efficient service! Down with the Bastille of monopoly!

As counsel for the Ashuela, Mr. Ogilvy sent for me, and by certain secretconduits of information at my disposal I was not long in discovering thedisquieting fact that a Mr. Orthwein, who was described as a gentlemanwith fat fingers and a plausible manner, had been in town for a week andhad been twice seen entering and emerging from Monahan's saloon. Inshort, Mr. Jason had already been "seen. " Nevertheless I went to himmyself, to find him for the first time in my experience absolutelynon-committal. 

"What's the Ashuela willing to do?" he demanded. 

I mentioned a sum, and he shook his head. I mentioned another, and stillhe shook his head. 

"Come 'round again, " he said. .. 

I was compelled to report this alarming situation to Ogilvy and Dickinsonand a few chosen members of a panicky board of directors. 

"It's that damned Grannis crowd, " said Dickinson, mentioning anaggressive gentleman who had migrated from Chicago to Wall Street somefive years before in a pink collar. 

"But what's to be done?" demanded Ogilvy, playing nervously with a goldpencil on the polished table. He was one of those Americans who in acommercial atmosphere become prematurely white, and today his boyish, smooth-shaven face was almost as devoid of colour as his hair. EvenLeonard Dickinson showed anxiety, which was unusual for him. 

"You've got to fix it, Hugh, " he said. 

I did not see my way, but I had long ago learned to assume the unruffledair and judicial manner of speaking that inspires the layman with almostsuperstitious confidence in the lawyer. .. . 

"We'll find a way out, " I said. 

Mr. Jason, of course, held the key to the situation, and just how I wasto get around him was problematical. In the meantime there was thepublic: to permit the other fellow to capture that was to be lacking inordinary prudence; if its votes counted for nothing, its savings weredesirable; and it was fast getting into a state of outrage againstmonopoly. The chivalry of finance did not permit of a revelation that Mr. Grannis and his buccaneers were behind the Automatic, but it was possibleto direct and strengthen the backfire which the Era and otherconservative newspapers had already begun. Mr. Tallant for delicatereasons being persona non grata at the Boyne Club, despite the fact thathe had so many friends there, we met for lunch in a private room at thenew hotel, and as we sipped our coffee and smoked our cigars we planned aseries of editorials and articles that duly appeared. They made a strongappeal to the loyalty of our citizens to stand by the home company andhome capital that had taken generous risks to give them service at a timewhen the future of the telephone business was by no means assured; theybelittled the charges made by irresponsible and interested "parties, " andfinally pointed out, not without effect, that one logical consequence ofhaving two telephone companies would be to compel subscribers inself-defence to install two telephones instead of one. And where was thesaving in that?

"Say, Paret, " said Judah B. When we had finished our labours; "if youever get sick of the law, I'll give you a job on the Era's staff. This isfine, the way you put it. It'll do a lot of good, but how in hell are yougoing to handle Judd?. .. . "

For three days the inspiration was withheld. And then, as I was strollingdown Boyne Street after lunch gazing into the store windows it camesuddenly, without warning. Like most inspirations worth anything, it wasvery simple. Within half an hour I had reached Monahan's saloon and foundMr. Jason out of bed, but still in his bedroom, seated meditatively atthe window that looked over the alley. 

"You know the crowd in New York behind this Automatic company as well asI do, Jason, " I said. "Why do you want to deal with them when we'vealways been straight with you, when we're ready to meet them and go onebetter? Name your price. "

"Suppose I do--what then, " he replied. "This thing's gone pretty far. Under that damned new charter the franchise has got to be bid for--hasn'tit? And the people want this company. There'll be a howl from one end ofthis town to the other if we throw 'em down. "

"We'll look out for the public, " I assured him, smiling. 

"Well, " he said, with one of his glances that were like flashes, "whatyou got up your sleeve?"

"Suppose another telephone company steps in, and bids a little higher forthe franchise. That relieves, your aldermen of all responsibility, doesn't it?"

"Another telephone company!" he repeated. 

I had already named it on my walk. 

"The Interurban, " I said. 

"A dummy company?" said Mr. Jason. 

"Lively enough to bid something over a hundred thousand to the city forits franchise, " I replied. 

Judd Jason, with a queer look, got up and went to a desk in a darkcorner, and after rummaging for a few moments in one of the pigeon-holes, drew forth a glass cylinder, which he held out as he approached me. 

"You get it, Mr. Paret, " he said. 

"What is it?" I asked, "a bomb!"

"That, " he announced, as he twisted the tube about in his long fingers, holding it up to the light, "is the finest brand of cigars ever made inCuba. A gentleman who had every reason to be grateful to me--I won't saywho he was--gave me that once. Well, the Lord made me so's I can'tappreciate any better tobacco than those five-cent 'Bobtails' Monahan'sgot downstairs, and I saved it. I saved it for the man who would putsomething over me some day, and--you get it. "

"Thank you, " I said, unconsciously falling in with the semi-ceremony ofhis manner. "I do not flatter myself that the solution I have suggesteddid not also occur to you. "

"You'll smoke it?" he asked. 

"Surely. "

"Now? Here with me?"

"Certainly, " I agreed, a little puzzled. As I broke the seal, pulled outthe cork and unwrapped the cigar from its gold foil he took a stick andrapped loudly on the floor. After a brief interval footsteps were heardon the stairs and Mike Monahan, white aproned and scarlet faced, appearedat the door. 

"Bobtails, " said Mr. Jason, laconically. 

"It's them I thought ye'd be wanting, " said the saloon-keeper, holdingout a handful. Judd Jason lighted one, and began smoking reflectively. 

I gazed about the mean room, with its litter of newspapers and reports, its shabby furniture, and these seemed to have become incongruous, out offigure in the chair facing me keeping with the thoughtful figure in thechair facing me. 

"You had a college education, Mr. Paret, " he remarked at length. 

"Yes. "

"Life's a queer thing. Now if I'd had a college education, like you, andyou'd been thrown on the world, like me, maybe I'd be livin' up there onGrant Avenue and you'd be down here over the saloon. "

"Maybe, " I said, wondering uneasily whether he meant to imply asimilarity in our gifts. But his manner remained impassive, speculative. 

"Ever read Carlyle's 'French Revolution'?" he asked suddenly. 

"Why, yes, part of it, a good while ago. "

"When you was in college?"

"Yes. "

"I've got a little library here, " he said, getting up and raising theshades and opening the glass doors of a bookcase which had escaped myattention. He took down a volume of Carlyle, bound in half calf. 

"Wouldn't think I cared for such things, would you?" he demanded as hehanded it to me. 

"Well, you never can tell what a man's real tastes are until you knowhim, " I observed, to conceal my surprise. 

"That's so, " he agreed. "I like books--some books. If I'd had aneducation, I'd have liked more of 'em, known more about 'em. Now I canread this one over and over. That feller Carlyle was a genius, he couldlook right into the bowels of the volcano, and he was on to how men andwomen feet down there, how they hate, how they square 'emselves when theyget a chance. "

He had managed to bring before me vividly that terrible, volcanic flow onVersailles of the Paris mob. He put back the book and resumed his seat. 

"And I know how these people fed down here, below the crust, " he went on, waving his cigar out of the window, as though to indicate the whole ofthat mean district. "They hate, and their hate is molten hell. I've beenthrough it. "

"But you've got on top, " I suggested. 

"Sure, I've got on top. Do you know why? it's because I hated--that'swhy. A man's feelings, if they're strong enough, have a lot to do withwhat he becomes. "

"But he has to have ability, too, " I objected. 

"Sure, he has to have ability, but his feeling is the driving power if hefeels strong enough, he can make a little ability go a long way. "

I was struck by the force of this remark. I scarcely recognized JuddJason. The man, as he revealed himself, had become at once more sinisterand more fascinating. 

"I can guess how some of those Jacobins felt when they had thearistocrats in the dock. They'd got on top--the Jacobins, I mean. It'shuman nature to want to get on top--ain't it?" He looked at me andsmiled, but he did not seem to expect a reply. "Well, what you callsociety, rich, respectable society like you belong to would have made abum and a criminal out of me if I hadn't been too smart for 'em, and it'sa kind of satisfaction to have 'em coming down here to Monahan's forthings they can't have without my leave. I've got a half Nelson on 'em. Iwouldn't live up on Grant Avenue if you gave me Scherer's new house. "

I was silent. 

"Instead of starting my career in college, I started in jail, " he wenton, apparently ignoring any effect he may have produced. So subtly, sodispassionately indeed was he delivering himself of these remarks that itwas impossible to tell whether he meant their application to be personal, to me, or general, to my associates. "I went to jail when I was fourteenbecause I wanted a knife to make kite sticks, and I stole a razor from abarber. I was bitter when they steered me into a lockup in HickoryStreet. It was full of bugs and crooks, and they put me in the same cellwith an old-timer named 'Red' Waters; who was one of the slickestsafe-blowers around in those days. Red took a shine to me, found out Ihad a head piece, and said their gang could use a clever boy. If I'd goin with him, I could make all kinds of money. I guess I might have joinedthe gang if Red hadn't kept talking--about how the boss of his districtnamed Gallagher would come down and get him out, --and sure enoughGallagher did come down and get him out. I thought I'd rather beGallagher than Red--Red had to serve time once in a while. Soon as he gotout I went down to Gallagher's saloon, and there was Red leaning over thebar. 'Here's a smart kid! he says, 'He and me were room-mates over inHickory Street. ' He got to gassing me, and telling me I'd better comealong with him, when Gallagher came in. 'What is it ye'd like to be, myson?' says he. A politician, I told him. I was through going to jail. Gallagher had a laugh you could hear all over the place. He took me on asa kind of handy boy around the establishment, and by and by I began torun errands and find out things for him. I was boss of that ward myselfwhen I was twenty-six. .. . How'd you like that cigar?"

I praised it. 

"It ought to have been a good one, " he declared. "Well, I don't want tokeep you here all afternoon telling you my life story. "

I assured him I had been deeply interested. 

"Pretty slick idea of yours, that dummy company, Mr. Paret. Go ahead andorganize it. " He rose, which was contrary to his custom on the departureof a visitor. "Drop in again. We'll talk about the books. ". .. 

I walked slowly back reflecting on this conversation, upon the motivesimpelling Mr. Jason to become thus confidential; nor was it the mostcomforting thought in the world that the artist in me had appealed to theartist in him, that he had hailed me as a breather. But for the grace ofGod I might have been Mr. Jason and he Mr. Paret: undoubtedly that waswhat he had meant to imply. .. And I was forced to admit that he hadsucceeded--deliberately or not--in making the respectable Mr. Paret justa trifle uncomfortable. 

In the marble vestibule of the Corn National Bank I ran into Tallant, holding his brown straw hat in his hand and looking a little moremoth-eaten than usual. 

"Hello, Paret, " he said "how is that telephone business getting along?"

"Is Dickinson in?" I asked. 

Tallant nodded. 

We went through the cool bank, with its shining brass and red mahogany, its tiled floor, its busy tellers attending to files of clients, to thepresident's sanctum in the rear. Leonard Dickinson, very spruce anddignified in a black cutaway coat, was dictating rapidly to a woman, stenographer, whom he dismissed when he saw us. The door was shut. 

"I was just asking Paret about the telephone affair, " said Mr. Tallant. 

"Well, have you found a way out?" Leonard Dickinson looked questioninglyat me. 

"It's all right, " I answered. "I've seen Jason. "

"All right!" they both ejaculated at once. 

"We win, " I said. 

They stood gazing at me. Even Dickinson, who was rarely ruffled, seemedexcited. 

"Do you mean to say you've fixed it?" he demanded. 

I nodded. They stared at me in amazement. 

"How the deuce did you manage it?"

"We organize the Interurban Telephone Company, and bid for thefranchise--that's all. "

"A dummy company!" cried Tallant. "Why, it's simple as ABC!"

Dickinson smiled. He was tremendously relieved, and showed it. 

"That's true about all great ideas, Tallant, " he said. "They're simple, only it takes a clever man to think of them. "

"And Jason agrees?" Tallant demanded. 

I nodded again. "We'll have to outbid the Automatic people. I haven'tseen Bitter yet about the--about the fee. "

"That's all right, " said Leonard Dickinson, quickly. "I take off my hatto you. You've saved us. You can ask any fee you like, " he addedgenially. "Let's go over to--to the Ashuela and get some lunch. " He hadbeen about to say the Club, but he remembered Mr. Tallant's presence intime. "Nothing's worrying you, Hugh?" he added, as we went out, followedby the glances of his employees. 

"Nothing, " I said. .. . 

XVIX. 

Making money in those days was so ridiculously easy! The trouble was toknow how to spend it. One evening when I got home I told Maude I had asurprise for her. 

"A surprise?" she asked, looking up from a little pink smock she wasmaking for Chickabiddy. 

"I've bought that lot on Grant Avenue, next to the Ogilvys'. "

She dropped her sewing, and stared at me. 

"Aren't you pleased?" I asked. "At last we are going to have a house ofour very own. What's the matter?"

"I can't bear the thought of leaving here. I'm so used to it. I've grownto love it. It's part of me. "

"But, " I exclaimed, a little exasperated, "you didn't expect to live herealways, did you? The house has been too small for us for years. I thoughtyou'd be delighted. " (This was not strictly true, for I had ratherexpected some such action on her part. ) "Most women would. Of course, ifit's going to make such a difference to you as that, I'll sell the lot. That won't be difficult. "

I got up, and started to go into my study. She half rose, and her sewingfell to the floor. 

"Oh, why are we always having misunderstandings? Do sit down a minute, Hugh. Don't think I'm not appreciative, " she pleaded. "It was--such ashock. "

I sat down rather reluctantly. 

"I can't express what I think, " she continued, rather breathlessly, "butsometimes I'm actually frightened, we're going through life so fast inthese days, and it doesn't seem as if we were getting the real things outof it. I'm afraid of your success, and of all the money you're making. "

I smiled. 

"I'm not so rich yet, as riches go in these days, that you need bealarmed, " I said. 

She looked at me helplessly a moment. 

"I feel that it isn't--right, somehow, that you'll pay for it, that we'llpay for it. Goodness knows, we have everything we want, and more too. This house--this house is real, and I'm afraid that won't be a home, won't be real. That we'll be overwhelmed with--with things!". .. 

She was interrupted by the entrance of the children. But after dinner, when she had seen them to bed, as was her custom, she came downstairsinto my study and said quietly:--"I was wrong, Hugh. If you want to builda house, if you feel that you'd be happier, I have no right to object. Ofcourse my sentiment for this house is natural, the children were bornhere, but I've realized we couldn't live here always. "

"I'm glad you look at it that way, " I replied. "Why, we're alreadygetting cramped, Maude, and now you're going to have a governess I don'tknow where you'd put her. "

"Not too large, a house, " she pleaded. "I know you think I'm silly, butthis extravagance we see everywhere does make me uneasy. Perhaps it'sbecause I'm provincial, and always shall be. "

"Well, we must have a house large enough to be comfortable in, " I said. "There's no reason why we shouldn't be comfortable. " I thought it as wellnot to confess my ambitions, and I was greatly relieved that she did notreproach me for buying the lot without consulting her. Indeed, I wasgrateful for this unanticipated acquiescence, I felt nearer to her, thanI had for a long time. I drew up another chair to my desk. 

"Sit down and we'll make a few sketches, just for fun, " I urged. 

"Hugh, " she said presently, as we were blacking out prospective rooms, "do you remember all those drawings and plans we made in England, on ourwedding trip, and how we knew just what we wanted, and changed our mindsevery few days? And now we're ready to build, and haven't any ideas atall!"

"Yes, " I answered--but I did not look at her. 

"I have the book still--it's in the attic somewhere, packed away in abox. I suppose those plans would seem ridiculous now. "

It was quite true, --now that we were ready to build the home that hadbeen deferred so long, now that I had the money to spend without stint onits construction, the irony of life had deprived me of those strongdesires and predilections I had known on my wedding trip. What a joy itwould have been to build then! But now I found myself: wholly lacking indefinite ideas as to style and construction. Secretly, I looked forwardto certain luxuries, such as a bedroom and dressing-room and warm tiledbathroom all to myself bachelor privacies for which I had longed. Twomornings later at the breakfast table Maude asked me if I had thought ofan architect. 

"Why, Archie Lammerton, I suppose. Who else is there? Have you anyoneelse in mind?"

"N-no, " said Maude. "But I heard of such a clever man in Boston, whodoesn't charge Mr. Lammerton's prices; and who designs such beautifulprivate houses. "

"But we can afford to pay Lammerton's prices, " I replied, smiling. "Andwhy shouldn't we have the best?"

"Are you sure--he is the best, Hugh?"

"Everybody has him, " I said. 

Maude smiled in return. 

"I suppose that's a good reason, " she answered. 

"Of course it's a good reason, " I assured her. "These people--the peoplewe know--wouldn't have had Lammerton unless he was satisfactory. What'sthe matter with his houses?"

"Well, " said Maude, "they're not very original. I don't say they're notgood, in away, but they lack a certain imagination. It's difficult for meto express what I mean, 'machine made' isn't precisely the idea, butthere should be a certain irregularity in art--shouldn't there? I saw areproduction in one of the architectural journals of a house in Boston bya man named Frey, that seemed to me to have great charm. "

Here was Lucia, unmistakably. 

"That's all very well, " I said impatiently, "but when one has to live ina house, one wants something more than artistic irregularity. Lammertonknows how to build for everyday existence; he's a practical man, as wellas a man of taste, he may not be a Christopher Wrenn, but he understandsconveniences and comforts. His chimneys don't smoke, his windows aretight, he knows what systems of heating are the best, and whom to go to:he knows what good plumbing is. I'm rather surprised you don't appreciatethat, Maude, you're so particular as to what kind of rooms the childrenshall have, and you want a schoolroom-nursery with all the latestdevices, with sun and ventilation. The Berringers wouldn't have had him, the Hollisters and Dickinsons wouldn't have had him if his work lackedtaste. "

"And Nancy wouldn't have had him, " added Maude, and she smiled once more. 

"Well, I haven't consulted Nancy, or anyone else, " I replied--a littletartly, perhaps. "You don't seem to realize that some fashions may have abasis of reason. They are not all silly, as Lucia seems to think. IfLammerton builds satisfactory houses, he ought to be forgiven for beingthe fashion, he ought to have a chance. " I got up to leave. "Let's seewhat kind of a plan he'll draw up, at any rate. "

Her glance was almost indulgent. 

"Of course, Hugh. I want you to be satisfied, to be pleased, " she said. 

"And you?" I questioned, "you are to live in the house more than I. "

"Oh, I'm sure it will turn out all right, " she replied. "Now you'd betterrun along, I know you're late. "

"I am late, " I admitted, rather lamely. "If you don't care forLammerton's drawings, we'll get another architect. "

Several years before Mr. Lammerton had arrived among us with a Beaux Artsmoustache and letters of introduction to Mrs. Durrett and others. Wefound him the most adaptable, the most accommodating of young men, alwaysready to donate his talents and his services to private theatricals, tableaux, and fancy-dress balls, to take a place at a table at the lastmoment. One of his most appealing attributes was his "belief" in ourcity, --a form of patriotism that culminated, in later years, in "millionpopulation" clubs. I have often heard him declare, when the ladies hadleft the dining-room, that there was positively no limit to our futuregrowth; and, incidentally, to our future wealth. Such sentiments as thesecould not fail to add to any man's popularity, and his success was aforegone conclusion. Almost before we knew it he was building the newUnion Station of which he had foreseen the need, to take care of themillions to which our population was to be swelled; building the new PostOffice that the unceasing efforts of Theodore Watling finally procuredfor us: building, indeed, Nancy's new house, the largest of our privatemansions save Mr. Scherer's, a commission that had immediately broughtabout others from the Dickinsons and the Berringers. .. . That very day Icalled on him in his offices at the top of one of our new buildings, where many young draftsmen were bending over their boards. I was usheredinto his private studio. 

"I suppose you want something handsome, Hugh, " he said, looking at meover his cigarette, "something commensurate with these fees I hear youare getting. "

"Well, I want to be comfortable, " I admitted. 

We lunched at the Club together, where we talked over the requirements. 

When he came to dinner the next week and spread out his sketch on theliving-room table Maude drew in her breath. 

"Why, Hugh, " she exclaimed in dismay, "it's as big as--as big as theWhite House!"

"Not quite, " I answered, laughing with Archie. "We may as well take ourease in our old age. "

"Take our ease!" echoed Maude. "We'll rattle 'round in it. I'll never getused to it. "

"After a month, Mrs. Paret, I'll wager you'll be wondering how you evergot along without it, " said Archie. 

It was not as big as the White House, yet it could not be called small. Ihad seen, to that. The long facade was imposing, dignified, with a touchof conventionality and solidity in keeping with my standing in the city. It was Georgian, of plum-coloured brick with marble trimmings and marblewedges over the ample windows, some years later I saw the house byFerguson, of New York, from which Archie had cribbed it. At one end, offthe dining-room, was a semicircular conservatory. There was a smallportico, with marble pillars, and in the ample, swift sloping roof manydormers; servants' rooms, Archie explained. The look of anxiety onMaude's face deepened as he went over the floor plans, thereception-room; dining room to seat thirty, the servants' hall; andupstairs Maude's room, boudoir and bath and dress closet, my "apartments"adjoining on one side and the children's on the other, and theguest-rooms with baths. .. . 

Maude surrendered, as one who gives way to the inevitable. When theactual building began we both of us experienced, I think; a certain mildexcitement; and walked out there, sometimes with the children, in thespring evenings, and on Sunday afternoons. "Excitement" is, perhaps, toostrong a word for my feelings: there was a pleasurable anticipation on mypart, a looking forward to a more decorous, a more luxurious existence; acertain impatience at the delays inevitable in building. But a new legalcommercial enterprise of magnitude began to absorb me at his time, andsomehow the building of this home--the first that we possessed was notthe event it should have been; there were moments when I felt cheated, when I wondered what had become of that capacity for enjoyment which inmy youth had been so keen. I remember indeed, one grey evening when Iwent there alone, after the workmen had departed, and stood in the litterof mortar and bricks and boards gazing at the completed front of thehouse. It was even larger than I had imagined it from the plans; in theSummer twilight there was an air about it, --if not precisely menacing, atleast portentous, with its gaping windows and towering roof. I was alittle tired from a hard day; I had the odd feeding of having raised upsomething with which--momentarily at least--I doubted my ability to cope:something huge, impersonal; something that ought to have represented afireside, a sanctuary, and yet was the embodiment of an element quitealien to the home; a restless element with which our American atmospherehad, by invisible degrees, become charged. As I stared at it, the oddfancy seized me that the building somehow typified my own career. .. . Ihad gained something, in truth, but had I not also missed something?something a different home would have embodied?

Maude and the children had gone, to the seaside. 

With a vague uneasiness I turned away from the contemplation of thosewalls. The companion mansions were closed, their blinds tightly drawn;the neighbourhood was as quiet as the country, save for a slight butpersistent noise that impressed itself on my consciousness. I walkedaround the house to spy in the back yard; a young girl rather stealthilygathering laths, and fragments of joists and flooring, and loading theminto a child's express-wagon. She started when she saw me. She waslittle, more than a child, and the loose calico dress she wore seemed toemphasize her thinness. She stood stock-still, staring at me withfrightened yet defiant eyes. I, too, felt a strange timidity in herpresence. 

"Why do you stop?" I asked at length. 

"Say, is this your heap?" she demanded. 

I acknowledged it. A hint of awe widened her eyes. Then site glanced atthe half-filled wagon. 

"This stuff ain't no use to you, is it?"

"No, I'm glad to have you take it. "

She shifted to the other foot, but did not continue her gathering. Animpulse seized me, I put down my walkingstick and began picking up piecesof wood, flinging them into the wagon. I looked at her again, ratherfurtively; she had not moved. Her attitude puzzled me, for it was oneneither of surprise nor of protest. The spectacle of the "millionaire"owner of the house engaged in this menial occupation gave her no thrills. I finished the loading. 

"There!" I said, and drew a dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it toher. Even then she did not thank me, but took up the wagon tongue andwent off, leaving on me a disheartening impression of numbness, of lifecrushed out. I glanced up once more at the mansion I had built for myselflooming in the dusk, and walked hurriedly away. .. . 

One afternoon some three weeks after we had moved into the new house, Icame out of the Club, where I had been lunching in conference withScherer and two capitalists from New York. It was after four o'clock, theday was fading, the street lamps were beginning to cast sickly streaks ofjade-coloured light across the slush of the pavements. It was the sightof this slush (which for a brief half hour that morning had been puresnow, and had sent Matthew and Moreton and Biddy into ecstasies at thenotion of a "real Christmas"), that brought to my mind the immanence ofthe festival, and the fact that I had as yet bought no presents. Such wasthe predicament in which I usually found myself on Christmas eve; and itwas not without a certain sense of annoyance at the task thus abruptlyconfronting me that I got into my automobile and directed the chauffeurto the shopping district. The crowds surged along the wet sidewalks andoverflowed into the street, and over the heads of the people I stared atthe blazing shop-windows decked out in Christmas greens. My chauffeur, abristly-haired Parisian, blew his horn insolently, men and women jostledeach other to get out of the way, their holiday mood giving place toresentment as they stared into the windows of the limousine. With theAmerican inability to sit still I shifted from one corner of the seat toanother, impatient at the slow progress of the machine: and I felt acertain contempt for human beings, that they should make all this fuss, burden themselves with all these senseless purchases, for a tradition. The automobile stopped, and I fought my way across the sidewalk into thestore of that time-honoured firm, Elgin, Yates and Garner, pausinguncertainly before the very counter where, some ten years before, I hadbought an engagement ring. Young Mr. Garner himself spied me, and handingover a customer to a tired clerk, hurried forward to greet me, his mannerimplying that my entrance was in some sort an event. I had become used tothis aroma of deference. 

"What can I show you, Mr. Paret?" he asked. 

"I don't know--I'm looking around, " I said, vaguely, bewildered by theglittering baubles by which I was confronted. What did Maude want? WhileI was gazing into the case, Mr. Garner opened a safe behind him, layingbefore me a large sapphire set with diamonds in a platinum brooch; abeautiful stone, in the depths of it gleaming a fire like a star in anarctic sky. I had not given Maude anything of value of late. Decidedly, this was of value; Mr. Garner named the price glibly; if Mrs. Paretdidn't care for it, it might be brought back or exchanged. I took it, with a sigh of relief. Leaving the store, I paused on the edge of therushing stream of humanity, with the problem of the children's giftsstill to be solved. I thought of my own childhood, when at ChristmastideI had walked with my mother up and down this very street, so changed andmodernized now; recalling that I had had definite desires, desperateones; but my imagination failed me when I tried to summon up the emotionsconnected with them. I had no desires now: I could buy anything in reasonin the whole street. What did Matthew and Moreton want? and little Biddy?Maude had not "spoiled" them; but they didn't seem to have any definitewants. The children made me think, with a sudden softening, of TomPeters, and I went into a tobacconist's and bought him a box of expensivecigars. Then I told the chauffeur to take me to a toy-shop, where I stoodstaring through a plate-glass window at the elaborate playthings devisedfor the modern children of luxury. In the centre was a toy man-of-war, three feet in length, with turrets and guns, and propellers and a realsteam-engine. As a boy I should have dreamed about it, schemed for it, bartered my immortal soul for it. But--if I gave it to Matthew, what wasthere for Moreton? A steam locomotive caught my eye, almost as elaborate. Forcing my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a statebordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intensealertness and respect when he understood my desires. He didn't know theprice of the objects in question. He brought the proprietor, anobsequious little German who, on learning my name, repeated it in everysentence. For Biddy I chose a doll that was all but human; when held by ayoung woman for my inspection, it elicited murmurs of admiration from thewomen shoppers by whom we were surrounded. The proprietor promised tomake a special delivery of the three articles before seven o'clock. .. . 

Presently the automobile, after speeding up the asphalt of Grant Avenue, stopped before the new house. In spite of the change that house had madein my life, in three weeks I had become amazingly used to it; yet I hadan odd feeling that Christmas eve as I stood under the portico with mykey in the door, the same feeling of the impersonality of the place whichI had experienced before. Not that for one moment I would have exchangedit for the smaller house we had left. I opened the door. How often, inthat other house, I had come in the evening seeking quiet, my brainoccupied with a problem, only to be annoyed by the romping of thechildren on the landing above. A noise in one end of it echoed to theother. But here, as I entered the hall, all was quiet: a dignified, deep-carpeted stairway swept upward before me, and on either side werewide, empty rooms; and in the subdued light of one of them I saw a darkfigure moving silently about--the butler. He came forward to relieve me, deftly, of my hat and overcoat. Well, I had it at last, thisestablishment to which I had for so long looked forward. And yet thatevening, as I hesitated in the hall, I somehow was unable to grasp thatit was real and permanent, the very solidity of the walls and doorsparadoxically suggested transientness, the butler a flitting ghost. Howstill the place was! Almost oppressively still. I recalled oddly a storyof a peasant who, yearning for the great life, had stumbled upon an emptypalace, its tables set with food in golden dishes. Before two days hadpassed he had fled from it in horror back to his crowded cottage and hisdrudgery in the fields. Never once had the sense of possession of thepalace been realized. Nor did I feel that I possessed this house, thoughI had the deeds of it in my safe and the receipted bills in my files. Iteluded me; seemed, in my, bizarre mood of that evening, almost to mockme. "You have built me, " it seemed to say, "but I am stronger than you, because you have not earned me. " Ridiculous, when the years of my labourand the size of my bank account were considered! Such, however, is theverbal expression of my feeling. Was the house empty, after all? Hadsomething happened? With a slight panicky sensation I climbed the stairs, with their endless shallow treads, to hurry through the silent hallway tothe schoolroom. Reassuring noises came faintly through the heavy door. Iopened it. Little Biddy was careening round and round, cryingout:--"To-morrow's Chris'mas! Santa Claus is coming tonight. "

Matthew was regarding her indulgently, sympathetically, Moreton ratherscornfully. The myth had been exploded for both, but Matthew still huggedit. That was the difference between them. Maude, seated on the floor, perceived me first, and glanced up at me with a smile. 

"It's father!" she said. 

Biddy stopped in the midst of a pirouette. At the age of seven she wasstill shy with me, and retreated towards Maude. 

"Aren't we going to have a tree, father?" demanded Moreton, aggressively. "Mother won't tell us--neither will Miss Allsop. "

Miss Allsop was their governess. 

"Why do you want a tree?" I asked. 

"Oh, for Biddy, " he said. 

"It wouldn't be Christmas without a tree, " Matthew declared, "--and SantaClaus, " he added, for his sister's benefit. 

"Perhaps Santa Claus, when he sees we've got this big house, will thinkwe don't need anything, and go on to some poorer children, " said Maude. "You wouldn't blame him if he did that, --would you?"

The response to this appeal cannot be said to have been enthusiastic. .. . 

After dinner, when at last all of them were in bed, we dressed the tree;it might better be said that Maude and Miss Allsop dressed it, while Igave a perfunctory aid. Both the women took such a joy in the process, vying with each other in getting effects, and as I watched them eagerlydraping the tinsel and pinning on the glittering ornaments I wondered whyit was that I was unable to find the same joy as they. Thus it had beenevery Christmas eve. I was always tired when I got home, and after dinnerrelaxation set in. 

An electrician had come while we were at the table, and had fastened onthe little electric bulbs which did duty as candles. 

"Oh, " said Maude, as she stood off to survey the effect, "isn't itbeautiful! Come, Miss Allsop, let's get the presents. "

They flew out of the room, and presently hurried back with their armsfull of the usual parcels: parcels from Maude's family in Elkington, frommy own relatives, from the Blackwoods and the Peterses, from Nancy. Inthe meantime I had had my own contributions brought up, the man of war, the locomotive, the big doll. Maude stood staring. 

"Hugh, they'll be utterly ruined!" she exclaimed. 

"The boys might as well have something instructive, " I replied, "and asfor Biddy--nothing's too good for her. "

"I might have known you wouldn't forget them, although you are sobusy. ". .. . 

We filled the three stockings hung by the great fireplace. Then, with alast lingering look at the brightness of the tree, she stood in thedoorway and turned the electric switch. 

"Not before seven to-morrow morning, Miss Allsop, " she said. "Hugh, youwill get up, won't you? You mustn't miss seeing them. You can go back tobed again. "

I promised. 

Evidently, this was Reality to Maude. And had it not been one of mydreams of marriage, this preparing for the children's Christmas, remembering the fierce desires of my own childhood? It struck me, after Ihad kissed her good night and retired to my dressing-room, that fiercedesires burned within me still, but the objects towards which theirflames leaped out differed. That was all. Had I remained a child, sincemy idea of pleasure was still that of youth? The craving far excitement, adventure, was still unslaked; the craving far freedom as keen as ever. During the whole of my married life, I had been conscious of an innerprotest against "settling down, " as Tom Peters had settled down. Thesmaller house from which we had moved, with its enforced propinquity, hard emphasized the bondage of marriage. Now I had two rooms to myself, in the undisputed possession of which I had taken a puerile delight. Onone side of my dressing-room Archie Lammerton had provided a huge closetcontaining the latest devices for the keeping of a multitudinouswardrobe; there was a reading-lamp, and the easiest of easy-chairs, imported from England, while between the windows were shelves of Italianwalnut which I had filled with the books I had bought while at Cambridge, and had never since opened. As I sank down in my chair that odd feelingof uneasiness, of transience and unreality, of unsatisfaction I had hadever since we had moved suddenly became intensified, and at the verymoment when I had gained everything I had once believed a man coulddesire! I was successful, I was rich, my health had not failed, I had awife who catered to my wishes, lovable children who gave no trouble andyet--there was still the void to be filled, the old void I had felt as aboy, the longing for something beyond me, I knew not what; there was thestrange inability to taste any of these things, the need at every turnfor excitement, for a stimulus. My marriage had been a disappointment, though I strove to conceal this from myself; a disappointment because ithad not filled the requirements of my category--excitement and mystery: Ihad provided the setting and lacked the happiness. Another womanNancy--might have given me the needed stimulation; and yet my thoughtsdid not dwell on Nancy that night, my longings were not directed towardsher, but towards the vision of a calm, contented married happiness I hadlooked forward to in youth, --a vision suddenly presented once more by thesight of Maude's simple pleasure in dressing the Christmas tree. Whatrestless, fiendish element in me prevented my enjoying that? I hadsomething of the fearful feeling of a ghost in my own house and among myown family, of a spirit doomed to wander, unable to share in what shouldhave been my own, in what would have saved me were I able to partake ofit. Was it too late to make that effort?. .. . Presently the strains ofmusic pervaded my consciousness, the chimes of Trinity ringing out in thedamp night the Christmas hymn, Adeste Fideles. It was midnight it wasChristmas. How clear the notes rang through the wet air that came in atmy window! Back into the dim centuries that music led me, into candle-litGothic chapels of monasteries on wind-swept heights above the firs, andcathedrals in mediaeval cities. Twilight ages of war and scourge andstress and storm--and faith. "Oh, come, all ye Faithful!" What a strangething, that faith whose flame so marvellously persisted, piercing thegloom; the Christmas myth, as I had heard someone once call it. Did itpossess the power to save me? Save me from what? Ah, in this hour I knew. In the darkness the Danger loomed up before me, vague yet terrible, and Itrembled. Why was not this Thing ever present, to chasten and sober me?The Thing was myself. 

Into my remembrance, by what suggestion I know not, came that Marchevening when I had gone to Holder Chapel at Harvard to listen to apreacher, a personality whose fame and influence had since spreadthroughout the land. Some dim fear had possessed me then. I recalledvividly the man, and the face of Hermann Krebs as I drew back from thedoorway. .. . 

When I awoke my disquieting, retrospective mood had disappeared, and yetthere clung to me, minus the sanction of fear or reward or revealedtruth, a certain determination to behave, on this day at least, more likea father and a husband: to make an effort to enter into the spirit of thefestival, and see what happened. I dressed in cheerful haste, took thesapphire pendant from its velvet box, tiptoed into the still silentschoolroom and hung it on the tree, flooding on the electric light thatset the tinsel and globes ablaze. No sooner had I done this than I heardthe patter of feet in the hallway, and a high-pitched voice--Biddy's--crying out:--"It's Santa Claus!"

Three small, flannel-wrappered figures stood in the doorway. 

"Why, it's father!" exclaimed Moreton. 

"And he's all dressed!" said Matthew. 

"Oh-h-h!" cried Biddy, staring at the blazing tree, "isn't it beautiful!"

Maude was close behind them. She gave an exclamation of delightedsurprise when she saw me, and then stood gazing with shining eyes at thechildren, especially at Biddy, who stood dazzled by the glory of theconstellation confronting her. .. . Matthew, too, wished to prolong themoment of mystery. It was the practical Moreton who cried:--"Let's seewhat we've got!"

The assault and the sacking began. I couldn't help thinking as I watchedthem of my own wildly riotous, Christmas-morning sensations, when all thegifts had worn the aura of the supernatural; but the arrival of thesetoys was looked upon by my children as a part of the natural order of theuniverse. At Maude's suggestion the night before we had placed mypresents, pieces de resistance, at a distance from the tree, in the hopethat they would not be spied at once, that they would be in some sort aclimax. It was Matthew who first perceived the ship, and identified it, by the card, as his property. To him it was clearly wonderful, but nomiracle. He did not cry out, or call the attention of the others to it, but stood with his feet apart, examining it, his first remark being aquery as to why it didn't fly the American flag. It's ensign was British. Then Moreton saw the locomotive, was told that it was his, and tookpossession of it violently. Why wasn't there more track? Wouldn't I getmore track? I explained that it would go by steam, and he beganunscrewing the cap on the little boiler until he was distracted by theman-of-war, and with natural acquisitiveness started to take possessionof that. Biddy was bewildered by the doll, which Maude had taken up andwas holding in her lap. She had had talking dolls before, and dolls thatclosed their eyes; she recognized this one, indeed, as a sort ofsuper-doll, but her little mind was modern, too, and set no limits onwhat might be accomplished. She patted it, but was more impressed by theraptures of Miss Allsop, who had come in and was admiring it with someextravagance. Suddenly the child caught sight of her stocking, until nowforgotten, and darted for the fireplace. 

I turned to Maude, who stood beside me, watching them. 

"But you haven't looked on the tree yourself, " I reminded her. 

She gave me an odd, questioning glance, and got up and set down the doll. As she stood for a moment gazing at the lights, she seemed very girlishin her dressing-gown, with her hair in two long plaits down her back. 

"Oh, Hugh!" She lifted the pendant from the branch and held it up. Hergratitude, her joy at receiving a present was deeper than the children's!

"You chose it for me?"

I felt something like a pang when I thought how little trouble it hadbeen. 

"If you don't like it, " I said, "or wish to have it changed--"

"Changed!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "Do you think I'd change it?Only--it's much too valuable--"

I smiled. .. . Miss Allsop deftly undid the clasp and hung it aroundMaude's neck. 

"How it suits you, Mrs. Paret!" she cried. .. . 

This pendant was by no means the only present I had given Maude in recentyears, and though she cared as little for jewels as for dress she seemedto attach to it a peculiar value and significance that disturbed andsmote me, for the incident had revealed a love unchanged andunchangeable. Had she taken my gift as a sign that my indifference wasmelting?

As I went downstairs and into the library to read the financial page ofthe morning newspaper I asked myself, with a certain disquiet, whether, in the formal, complicated, and luxurious conditions in which we nowlived it might be possible to build up new ties and common interests. Ireflected that this would involve confessions and confidences on my part, since there was a whole side of my life of which Maude knew nothing. Ihad convinced myself long ago that a man's business career was no affairof his wife's: I had justified that career to myself: yet I had alwayshad a vague feeling that Maude, had she known the details, would not haveapproved of it. Impossible, indeed, for a woman to grasp these problems. They were outside of her experience. 

Nevertheless, something might be done to improve our relationship, something which would relieve me of that uneasy lack of unity I felt whenat home, of the lassitude and ennui I was wont to feel creeping over meon Sundays and holidays. .. . 

XX. 

I find in relating those parts of my experience that seem to be of mostsignificance I have neglected to tell of my mother's death, whichoccurred the year before we moved to Grant Avenue. She had clung the restof her days to the house in which I had been born. Of late years she hadlived in my children, and Maude's devotion to her had been unflagging. Truth compels me to say that she had long ceased to be a factor in mylife. I have thought of her in later years. 

Coincident with the unexpected feeling of fruitlessness that came to mewith the Grant Avenue house, of things achieved but not realized orappreciated, was the appearance of a cloud on the business horizon; orrather on the political horizon, since it is hard to separate the tworealms. There were signs, for those who could read, of a rising popularstorm. During the earliest years of the new century the politicalatmosphere had changed, the public had shown a tendency to grow restless;and everybody knows how important it is for financial operations, forprosperity, that the people should mind their own business. In short, ourcommercial-romantic pilgrimage began to meet with unexpected resistance. It was as though the nation were entering into a senseless conspiracy tokill prosperity. 

In the first place, in regard to the Presidency of the United States, acog had unwittingly been slipped. It had always been recognized--as Ihave said--by responsible financial personages that the impulses of themajority of Americans could not be trusted, that these--who had inheritedillusions of freedom--must be governed firmly yet with delicacy; unknownto them, their Presidents must be chosen for them, precisely as Mr. Watling had been chosen for the people of our state, and the popularenthusiasm manufactured later. There were informal meetings in New York, in Washington, where candidates were discussed; not that such and such aman was settled upon, --it was a process of elimination. Usually theaffair had gone smoothly. For instance, a while before, a benevolentcapitalist of the middle west, an intimate of Adolf Scherer, had becomeobsessed with the idea that a friend of his was the safest and sanest manfor the head of the nation, had convinced his fellow-capitalists of this, whereupon he had gone ahead to spend his energy and his money freely tosecure the nomination and election of this gentleman. 

The Republican National Committee, the Republican National Conventionwere allowed to squabble to their hearts' content as to whether Smith, Jones or Brown should be nominated, but it was clearly understood that ifRobinson or White were chosen there would be no corporation campaignfunds. This applied also to the Democratic party, on the rare occasionswhen it seemed to have an opportunity of winning. Now, however, throughan unpardonable blunder, there had got into the White House a Presidentwho was inclined to ignore advice, who appealed over the heads of the"advisers" to the populace; who went about tilting at the industrialstructures we had so painfully wrought, and in frequent blasts ofpresidential messages enunciated new and heretical doctrines; whoattacked the railroads, encouraged the brazen treason of labour unions, inspired an army of "muck-rakers" to fill the magazines with the wildestand most violent of language. State legislatures were emboldened to passmischievous and restrictive laws, and much of my time began to beoccupied in inducing, by various means, our courts to declare theseunconstitutional. How we sighed for a business man or a lawyer in theWhite House! The country had gone mad, the stock-market trembled, the cryof "corporation control" resounded everywhere, and everywhere demagoguesarose to inaugurate "reform campaigns, " in an abortive attempt to "cleanup politics. " Down with the bosses, who were the tools of thecorporations!

In our own city, which we fondly believed to be proof against theprevailing madness, a slight epidemic occurred; slight, yet momentarilyalarming. Accidents will happen, even in the best regulated politicalorganizations, --and accidents in these days appeared to be the rule. Acertain Mr. Edgar Greenhalge, a middle-aged, mild-mannered andinoffensive man who had made a moderate fortune in wholesale drugs, waselected to the School Board. Later on some of us had reason to suspectthat Perry Blackwood--with more astuteness than he had been given creditfor--was responsible for Mr. Greenhalge's candidacy. At any rate, he wasnot a man to oppose, and in his previous life had given no hint that hemight become a trouble maker. Nothing happened for several months. Butone day on which I had occasion to interview Mr. Jason on a little matterof handing over to the Railroad a piece of land belonging to the city, which was known as Billings' Bowl, he inferred that Mr. Greenhaige mightprove a disturber of that profound peace with which the cityadministration had for many years been blessed. 

"Who the hell is he?" was Mr. Jason's question. 

It appeared that Mr. G. 's private life had been investigated, withdisappointingly barren results; he was, seemingly, an anomalistic beingin our Nietzschean age, an unaggressive man; he had never sold any drugsto the city; he was not a church member; nor could it be learned that hehad ever wandered into those byways of the town where Mr. Jason mighteasily have got trace of him: if he had any vices, he kept them locked upin a safe-deposit box that could not be "located. " He was very genial, and had a way of conveying disturbing facts--when he wished to conveythem--under cover of the most amusing stories. Mr. Jason was not a man toget panicky. Greenhalge could be handled all right, only--what was therein it for Greenhalge?--a nut difficult for Mr. Jason to crack. The twoother members of the School Board were solid. Here again the wisest ofmen was proved to err, for Mr. Greenhalge turned out to have powers ofpersuasion; he made what in religious terms would have been called aconversion in the case of another member of the board, an hithertostaunch old reprobate by the name of Muller, an ex-saloon-keeper incomfortable circumstances to whom the idea of public office had appealed. 

Mr. Greenhalge, having got wind of certain transactions that interestedhim extremely, brought them in his good-natured way to the knowledge ofMr. Gregory, the district attorney, suggesting that he investigate. Mr. Gregory smiled; undertook, as delicately as possible, to convey to Mr. Greenhalge the ways of the world, and of the political world inparticular, wherein, it seemed, everyone was a good fellow. Mr. Greenhalge was evidently a good fellow, and didn't want to make troubleover little things. No, Mr. Greenhalge didn't want to make trouble; heappreciated a comfortable life as much as Mr. Gregory; he told thedistrict attorney a funny story which might or might not have had anapplication to the affair, and took his leave with the remark that he hadbeen happy to make Mr. Gregory's acquaintance. On his departure thedistrict attorney's countenance changed. He severely rebuked asubordinate for some trivial mistake, and walked as rapidly as he couldcarry his considerable weight to Monahan's saloon. .. . One of the thingsMr. Gregory had pointed out incidentally was that Mr. Greenhalge'sevidence was vague, and that a grand jury wanted facts, which might bedifficult to obtain. Mr. Greenhalge, thinking over the suggestion, sentfor Krebs. In the course of a month or two the investigation wasaccomplished, Greenhalge went back to Gregory; who repeated his homilies, whereupon he was handed a hundred or so typewritten pages of evidence. 

It was a dramatic moment. 

Mr. Gregory resorted to pleading. He was sure that Mr. Greenhalge didn'twant to be disagreeable, it was true and unfortunate that such thingswere so, but they would be amended: he promised all his influence toamend them. The public conscience, said Mr. Gregory, was being aroused. Now how much better for the party, for the reputation, the fair name ofthe city if these things could be corrected quietly, and nobody indictedor tried! Between sensible and humane men, wasn't that the obvious way?After the election, suit could be brought to recover the money. But Mr. Greenhalge appeared to be one of those hopeless individuals without aspark of party loyalty; he merely continued to smile, and to suggest thatthe district attorney prosecute. Mr. Gregory temporized, and presentlyleft the city on a vacation. A day or two after his second visit to thedistrict attorney's office Mr. Greenhalge had a call from the cityauditor and the purchasing agent, who talked about their families, --whichwas very painful. It was also intimated to Mr. Greenhalge by others whoaccosted him that he was just the man for mayor. He smiled, and modestlybelittled his qualifications. .. . 

Suddenly, one fine morning, a part of the evidence Krebs had gatheredappeared in the columns of the Mail and State, a new and enterprisingnewspaper for which the growth and prosperity of our city wereresponsible; the sort of "revelations" that stirred to amazement andwrath innocent citizens of nearly every city in our country: politics and"graft" infesting our entire educational system, teachers and janitorslevied upon, prices that took the breath away paid to favoured firms forsupplies, specifications so worded that reasonable bids were barred. Therespectable firm of Ellery and Knowles was involved. In spite of ourhorror, we were Americans and saw the humour of the situation, andlaughed at the caricature in the Mail and State representing a scholarholding up a pencil and a legend under it, "No, it's not gold, but itought to be. "

Here I must enter into a little secret history. Any affair thatthreatened the integrity of Mr. Jason's organization was of seriousmoment to the gentlemen of the financial world who found thatorganization invaluable and who were also concerned about the fair nameof their community; a conference in the Boyne Club decided that the cityofficials were being persecuted, and entitled therefore to "the very bestof counsel, "--in this instance, Mr. Hugh Paret. It was also thought wiseby Mr. Dickinson, Mr. Gorse, and Mr. Grierson, and by Mr. Paret himselfthat he should not appear in the matter; an aspiring young attorney, Mr. Arbuthnot, was retained to conduct the case in public. Thus capital cameto the assistance of Mr. Jason, a fund was raised, and I was given carteblanche to defend the miserable city auditor and purchasing agent, bothof whom elicited my sympathy; for they were stout men, and rapidly losingweight. Our first care was to create a delay in the trial of the case inorder to give the public excitement a chance to die down. For the publicis proverbially unable to fix its attention for long on one object, continually demanding the distraction that our newspapers make it theirbusiness to supply. Fortunately, a murder was committed in one of oursuburbs, creating a mystery that filled the "extras" for some weeks, andthis was opportunely followed by the embezzlement of a considerable sumby the cashier of one of our state banks. Public interest was dividedbetween baseball and the tracking of this criminal to New Zealand. 

Our resentment was directed, not so much against Commissioner Greenhalgeas against Krebs. It is curious how keen is the instinct of men likeGrierson, Dickinson, Tallant and Scherer for the really dangerousopponent. Who the deuce was this man Krebs? Well, I could supply themwith some information: they doubtless recalled the Galligan, case; andMiller Gorse, who forgot nothing, also remembered his opposition in thelegislature to House Bill 709. He had continued to be the obscure legalchampion of "oppressed" labour, but how he had managed to keep body andsoul together I knew not. I had encountered him occasionally in courtcorridors or on the street; he did not seem to change much; nor did heappear in our brief and perfunctory conversations to bear any resentmentagainst me for the part I had taken in the Galligan affair. I avoided himwhen it was possible. .. . I had to admit that he had done a remarkablygood piece of work in collecting Greenhalge's evidence, and how the, erring city officials were to be rescued became a matter of seriousconcern. Gregory, the district attorney, was in an abject funk; in anycase a mediocre lawyer, after the indictment he was no help at all. I hadto do all the work, and after we had selected the particular "Railroad"judge before whom the case was to be tried, I talked it over with him. His name was Notting, he understood perfectly what was required of him, and that he was for the moment the chief bulwark on which depended thelogical interests of capital and sane government for their defence; also, his re-election was at stake. It was indicated to newspapers (such as theMail and State) showing a desire to keep up public interest in the affairthat their advertising matter might decrease; Mr. Sherrill's greatdepartment store, for instance, did not approve of this sort ofagitation. Certain stationers, booksellers and other business men had got"cold feet, " as Mr. Jason put it, the prospect of bankruptcy suddenlylooming ahead of them, --since the Corn National Bank held certainpaper. .. . 

In short, when the case did come to trial, it "blew up, " as one of ourward leaders dynamically expressed it. Several important witnesses weremysteriously lacking, and two or three school-teachers had suddenlydecided--to take a trip to Europe. The district attorney was ill, andassigned the prosecution to a mild assistant; while a scepticaljury--composed largely of gentlemen who had the business interests of thecommunity, and of themselves, at heart returned a verdict of "notguilty. " This was the signal for severely dignified editorials in Mr. Tallant's and other conservative newspapers, hinting that it might bewell in the future for all well-meaning but misguided reformers to thinktwice before subjecting the city to the cost of such trials, anduselessly attempting to inflame public opinion and upset legitimatebusiness. The Era expressed the opinion that no city in the United Stateswas "more efficiently and economically governed than our own. ""Irregularities" might well occur in every large organization; and itwould better have become Mr. Greenhalge if, instead of hiring an unknownlawyer thirsting for notoriety to cook up charges, he had called theattention of the proper officials to the matter, etc. , etc. The Pilotalone, which relied on sensation for its circulation, kept hammering awayfor a time with veiled accusations. But our citizens had become weary. .. . 

As a topic, however, this effective suppression of reform was referred towith some delicacy by my friends and myself. Our interference had beennecessary and therefore justified, but we were not particularly proud ofit, and our triumph had a temporarily sobering effect. It was about thistime, if I remember correctly, that Mr. Dickinson gave the beautifulstained-glass window to the church. .. . 

Months passed. One day, having occasion to go over to the Boyne IronWorks to get information at first hand from certain officials, and havingfinished my business, I boarded a South Side electric car standing at theterminal. Just before it started Krebs came down the aisle of the car andtook the seat in front of me. 

"Well, " I said, "how are you?" He turned in surprise, and thrust his big, bony hand across the back of the seat. "Come and sit here. " He came. "Doyou ever get back to Cambridge in these days?" I asked cordially. 

"Not since I graduated from newspaper work in Boston. That's a good manyyears ago. By the way, our old landlady died this year. "

"Do you mean--?" "Granite Face, " I was about to say. I had forgotten hername, but that homesick scene when Tom and I stood before our opentrunks, when Krebs had paid us a visit, came back to me. "You've kept intouch with her?" I asked, in surprise. 

"Well, " said Krebs, "she was one of the few friends I had at Cambridge. Ihad a letter from the daughter last week. She's done very well, and is aninstructor in biology in one of the western universities. "

I was silent a moment. 

"And you, --you never married, did you?" I inquired, somewhatirrelevantly. 

His semi-humorous gesture seemed to deny that such a luxury was for him. The conversation dragged a little; I began to feel the curiosity heinvariably inspired. What was his life? What were his beliefs? And I waspossessed by a certain militancy, a desire to "smoke him out. " I did notstop to reflect that mine was in reality a defensive rather than anaggressive attitude. 

"Do you live down here, in this part of the city?" I asked. 

No, he boarded in Fowler Street. I knew it as in a district given over tothe small houses of working-men. 

"I suppose you are still a socialist. "

"I suppose I am, " he admitted, and added, "at any rate, that is as nearas you can get to it. "

"Isn't it fairly definite?"

"Fairly, if my notions are taken in general as the antithesis of what youfellows believe. "

"The abolition of property, for instance. "

"The abolition of too much property. "

"What do you mean by 'too much'?"

"When it ceases to be real to a man, when it represents more than hisneed, when it drives him and he becomes a slave to it. "

Involuntarily I thought of my new house, --not a soothing reflection. 

"But who is going to decree how much property, a man should have?"

"Nobody--everybody. That will gradually tend to work itself out as webecome more sensible and better educated, and understand more clearlywhat is good for us. "

I retorted with the stock, common-sense phrase. 

"If we had a division to-morrow, within a few years or so the mostefficient would contrive to get the bulk of it back in their hands. "

"That's so, " he admitted. "But we're not going to have a divisionto-morrow. "

"Thank God!" I exclaimed. 

He regarded me. 

"The 'efficient' will have to die or be educated first. That will taketime. "

"Educated!"

"Paret, have you ever read any serious books on what you call socialism?"he asked. 

I threw out an impatient negative. I was going on to protest that I wasnot ignorant of the doctrine. 

"Oh, what you call socialism is merely what you believe to be the more orless crude and utopian propaganda of an obscure political party. Thatisn't socialism. Nor is the anomalistic attempt that the ChristianSocialists make to unite modern socialistic philosophy with Christianorthodoxy, socialism. "

"What is socialism, then?" I demanded, somewhat defiantly. 

"Let's call it education, science, " he said smilingly, "economics andgovernment based on human needs and a rational view of religion. It hasbeen taught in German universities, and it will be taught in ourswhenever we shall succeed in inducing your friends, by one means oranother, not to continue endowing them. Socialism, in the proper sense, is merely the application of modern science to government. "

I was puzzled and angry. What he said made sense somehow, but it soundedto me like so much gibberish. 

"But Germany is a monarchy, " I objected. 

"It is a modern, scientific system with monarchy as its superstructure. It is anomalous, but frank. The monarchy is there for all men to see, andsome day it will be done away with. We are supposedly a democracy, andour superstructure is plutocratic. Our people feel the burden, but theyhave not yet discovered what the burden is. "

"And when they do?" I asked, a little defiantly. 

"When they do, " replied Krebs, "they will set about making the plutocratshappy. Now plutocrats are discontented, and never satisfied; the morethey get, the more they want, the more they are troubled by what otherpeople have. "

I smiled in spite of myself. 

"Your interest in--in plutocrats is charitable, then?"

"Why, yes, " he said, "my interest in all kinds of people is charitable. However improbable it may seem, I have no reason to dislike or envypeople who have more than they know what to do with. " And the worst of itwas he looked it. He managed somehow simply by sitting there with hisstrange eyes fixed upon me--in spite of his ridiculous philosophy--tobelittle my ambitions, to make of small worth my achievements, to bringhome to me the fact that in spite of these I was neither contented norhappy though he kept his humour and his poise, he implied an experiencethat was far deeper, more tragic and more significant than mine. I wasgoaded into making an injudicious remark. 

"Well, your campaign against Ennerly and Jackson fell through, didn'tit?" Ennerly and Jackson were the city officials who had been tried. 

"It wasn't a campaign against them, " he answered. "And considering thesubordinate part I took in it, it could scarcely be called mine. "

"Greenhalge turned to you to get the evidence. "

"Well, I got it, " he said. 

"What became of it?"

"You ought to know. "

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say, Paret, " he answered slowly. "You ought to know, ifanyone knows. "

I considered this a moment, more soberly. I thought I might have countedon my fingers the number of men cognizant of my connection with the case. I decided that he was guessing. 

"I think you should explain that, " I told him. 

"The time may come, when you'll have to explain it. "

"Is that a threat?" I demanded. 

"A threat?" he repeated. "Not at all. "

"But you are accusing me--"

"Of what?" he interrupted suddenly. 

He had made it necessary for me to define the nature of his charges. 

"Of having had some connection with the affair in question. "

"Whatever else I may be, I'm not a fool, " he said quietly. "Neither thedistrict attorney's office, nor young Arbuthnot had brains enough to getthem out of that scrape. Jason didn't have influence enough with thejudiciary, and, as I happen to know, there was a good deal of moneyspent. "

"You may be called upon to prove it, " I retorted, rather hotly. 

"So I may. "

His tone, far from being defiant, had in it a note of sadness. I lookedat him. What were his potentialities? Was it not just possible that Ishould have to revise my idea of him, acknowledge that he might becomemore formidable than I had thought?

There was an awkward silence. 

"You mustn't imagine, Paret, that I have any personal animus against you, or against any of the men with whom you're associated, " he went on, aftera moment. "I'm sorry you're on that side, that's all, --I told you so oncebefore. I'm not calling you names, I'm not talking about morality andimmorality. Immorality, when you come down to it, is often just theopposition to progress that comes from blindness. I don't make themistake of blaming a few individuals for the evils of modern industrialsociety, and on the other hand you mustn't blame individuals for thediscomforts of what you call the reform movement, for that movement ismerely a symptom--a symptom of a disease due to a change in the structureof society. We'll never have any happiness or real prosperity until wecure that disease. I was inclined to blame you once, at the capital thattime, because it seemed to me that a man with all the advantages you havehad and a mind like yours didn't have much excuse. But I've thought aboutit since; I realize now that I've had a good many more 'advantages' thanyou, and to tell you the truth, I don't see how you could have come outanywhere else than where you are, --all your surroundings and trainingwere against it. That doesn't mean that you won't grasp the situationsome day--I have an idea you will. It's just an idea. The man who oughtto be condemned isn't the man that doesn't understand what's going on, but the man who comes to understand and persists in opposing it. " He roseand looked down at me with the queer, disturbing smile I remembered. "Iget off at this corner, " he added, rather diffidently. "I hope you'llforgive me for being personal. I didn't mean to be, but you rather forcedit on me. "

"Oh, that's all right, " I replied. The car stopped, and he hurried off. Iwatched his tall figure as it disappeared among the crowd on thesidewalk. .. . 

I returned to my office in one of those moods that are the moredisagreeable because conflicting. To-day in particular I had been arousedby what Tom used to call Krebs's "crust, " and as I sat at my desk warmwaves of resentment went through me at the very notion of his telling methat my view was limited and that therefore my professional conduct wasto be forgiven! It was he, the fanatic, who saw things in the largerscale! an assumption the more exasperating because at the moment he madeit he almost convinced me that he did, and I was unable to achieve forhim the measure of contempt I desired, for the incident, the measure ofridicule it deserved. My real animus was due to the fact that he hadmanaged to shake my self-confidence, to take the flavour out of myachievements, --a flavour that was in the course of an hour to becompletely restored by one of those interesting coincidences occasionallyoccurring in life. A young member of my staff entered with a telegram; Itore it open, and sat staring at it a moment before I realized that itbrought to me the greatest honour of my career. 

The Banker-Personality in New York had summoned me for consultation. Tobe recognized by him conferred indeed an ennoblement, the Star andGarter, so to speak, of the only great realm in America, that of highfinance; and the yellow piece of paper I held in my hand instantlyre-magnetized me, renewed my energy, and I hurried home to pack my bag inorder to catch the seven o'clock train. I announced the news to Maude. 

"I imagine it's because he knows I have made something of a study of thecoal roads situation, " I added. 

"I'm glad, Hugh, " she said. "I suppose it's a great compliment. "

Never had her inadequacy to appreciate my career been more apparent! Ilooked at her curiously, to realize once more with peculiar sharpness howfar we were apart; but now the resolutions I had made--and never carriedout--on that first Christmas in the new home were lacking. Indeed, it wasthe futility of such resolutions that struck me at this moment. If hermanner had been merely one of indifference, it would in a way have beeneasier to bear; she was simply incapable of grasping the significance ofthe event, the meaning to me of the years of unceasing, ambitious effortit crowned. 

"Yes, it is something of a recognition, " I replied. "Is there anything Ican get for you in New York? I don't know how long I shall have tostay--I'll telegraph you when I'm getting back. " I kissed her and hurriedout to the automobile. As I drove off I saw her still standing in thedoorway looking after me. .. . In the station I had a few minutes totelephone Nancy. 

"If you don't see me for a few days it's because I've gone to New York, "I informed her. 

"Something important, I'm sure. "

"How did you guess?" I demanded, and heard her laugh. 

"Come back soon and tell me about it, " she said, and I walked, exhilarated, to the train. .. . As I sped through the night, staring out ofthe window into the darkness, I reflected on the man I was going to see. But at that time, although he represented to me the quintessence ofachievement and power, I did not by any means grasp the many sidedsignificance of the phenomenon he presented, though I was keenly aware ofhis influence, and that men spoke of him with bated breath. Presidentscame and went, kings and emperors had responsibilities and were subjectdaily to annoyances, but this man was a law unto himself. He did exactlywhat he chose, and compelled other men to do it. Wherever commercereigned, --and where did it not?--he was king and head of its Holy Empire, Pope and Emperor at once. For he had his code of ethics, his religion, and those who rebelled, who failed to conform, he excommunicated; a codesomething like the map of Europe, --apparently inconsistent in places. What I did not then comprehend was that he was the American Principlepersonified, the supreme individual assertion of the conviction thatgovernment should remain modestly in the background while the efficientacquired the supremacy that was theirs by natural right; nor had Igrasped at that time the crowning achievement of a unity that fusedChristianity with those acquisitive dispositions said to be inherent inhumanity. In him the Lion and the Lamb, the Eagle and the Dove dwelttogether in amity and power. 

New York, always a congenial place to gentlemen of vitality and means andinfluential connections, had never appeared to me more sparkling, moreinspiring. Winter had relented, spring had not as yet begun. And as I satin a corner of the dining-room of my hotel looking out on the sunlitavenue I was conscious of partaking of the vigour and confidence of thewell-dressed, clear-eyed people who walked or drove past my window withthe air of a conquering race. What else was there in the world more worthhaving than this conquering sense? Religion might offer charms to theweak. Yet here religion itself became sensible, and wore the garb ofprosperity. The stonework of the tall church on the corner was all lace;and the very saints in their niches, who had known martyrdom and poverty, seemed to have renounced these as foolish, and to look down complacentlyon the procession of wealth and power. . Across the street, behind a sheetof glass, was a carrosserie where were displayed the shining yellow andblack panels of a closed automobile, the cost of which would have built afarm-house and stocked a barn. 

At eleven o'clock, the appointed hour, I was in Wall Street. Sending inmy name, I was speedily ushered into a room containing a table, aroundwhich were several men; but my eyes were drawn at once to the figure ofthe great banker who sat, massive and preponderant, at one end, smoking acigar, and listening in silence to the conversation I had interrupted. Herose courteously and gave me his hand, and a glance that isunforgettable. 

"It is good of you to come, Mr. Paret, " he said simply, as though hissummons had not been a command. "Perhaps you know some of thesegentlemen. "

One of them was our United States Senator, Theodore Watling. He, as itturned out, had been summoned from Washington. Of course I saw himfrequently, having from time to time to go to Washington on variouserrands connected with legislation. Though spruce and debonnair as ever, in the black morning coat he invariably wore, he appeared older than hehad on the day when I had entered his office. He greeted me warmly, asalways. 

"Hugh, I'm glad to see you here, " he said, with a slight emphasis on thelast word. My legal career was reaching its logical climax, the climax hehad foreseen. And he added, to the banker, that he had brought me up. 

"Then he was trained in a good school, " remarked that personage, affably. 

Mr. Barbour, the president of our Railroad, was present, and nodded to mekindly; also a president of a smaller road. In addition, there were twoNew York attorneys of great prominence, whom I had met. The banker's ownspecial lieutenant of the law, Mr. Clement T. Grolier, for whom I looked, was absent; but it was forthwith explained that he was offering, thatmorning, a resolution of some importance in the Convention of his Church, but that he would be present after lunch. 

"I have asked you to come here, Mr. Paret, " said the banker, "not onlybecause I know something personally of your legal ability, but because Ihave been told by Mr. Scherer and Mr. Barbour that you happen to haveconsiderable knowledge of the situation we are discussing, as well assome experience with cases involving that statute somewhat hazy to layminds, the Sherman anti-trust law. "

A smile went around the table. Mr. Watling winked at me; I nodded, butsaid nothing. The banker was not a man to listen to superfluous words. The keynote of his character was despatch. .. . 

The subject of the conference, like many questions bitterly debated andfought over in their time, has in the year I write these words come to beof merely academic interest. Indeed, the very situation we discussed thatday has been cited in some of our modern text-books as a classicconsequence of that archaic school of economics to which the name ofManchester is attached. Some half dozen or so of the railroads runningthrough the anthracite coal region had pooled their interests, --anextremely profitable proceeding. The public paid. We deemed it quitelogical that the public should pay--having been created largely for thatpurpose; and very naturally we resented the fact that the meddling Personwho had got into the White House without asking anybody's leave, --whoapparently did not believe in the infallibility of our legal Bible, theConstitution, --should maintain that the anthracite roads had formed acombination in restraint of trade, should lay down the preposterousdoctrine--so subversive of the Rights of Man--that railroads should notown coal mines. Congress had passed a law to meet this contention, suithad been brought, and in the lower court the government had won. 

As the day wore on our numbers increased, we were joined by other lawyersof renown, not the least of whom was Mr. Grolier himself, fresh from histriumph over religious heresy in his Church Convention. The note of theconference became tinged with exasperation, and certain gentlemen seizedthe opportunity to relieve their pent-up feelings on the subject of thePresident and his slavish advisers, --some of whom, before they came underthe spell of his sorcery, had once been sound lawyers and sensible men. With the exception of the great Banker himself, who made few comments, Theodore Watling was accorded the most deference; as one of the leadersof that indomitable group of senators who had dared to stand up againstpopular clamour, his opinions were of great value, and his tacticaladvice was listened to with respect. I felt more pride than ever in myformer chief, who had lost none of his charm. While in no way minimizingthe seriousness of the situation, his wisdom was tempered, as always, with humour; he managed, as it were, to neutralize the acid injected intothe atmosphere by other gentlemen present; he alone seemed to bear noanimus against the Author of our troubles; suave and calm, good natured, he sometimes brought the company into roars of laughter and evensucceeded in bringing occasional smiles to the face of the man who hadsummoned us--when relating some characteristic story of the queer geniuswhom the fates (undoubtedly as a practical joke) had made the chiefmagistrate of the United States of America. All geniuses have weaknesses;Mr. Wading had made a study of the President's, and more than once hadlured him into an impasse. The case had been appealed to the SupremeCourt, and Mr. Wading, with remarkable conciseness and penetration, reviewed the characteristics of each and every member of that tribunal, all of whom he knew intimately. They were, of course, not subject to"advice, " as were some of the gentlemen who sat on our state courts; nosane and self-respecting American would presume to "approach" them. Nevertheless they were human, and it were wise to take account, in theconduct of the case, of the probable bias of each individual. 

The President, overstepping his constitutional, Newtonian limits, mightpropose laws, Congress might acquiesce in them, but the Supreme Court, after listening to lawyers like Grolier (and he bowed to the attorney), made them: made them, he might have added, without responsibility to anyman in our unique Republic that scorned kings and apotheosized lawyers. AMartian with a sense of humour witnessing a stormy session of Congresswould have giggled at the thought of a few tranquil gentlemen in anotherroom of the Capitol waiting to decide what the people's representativesmeant--or whether they meant anything. .. . 

For the first time since I had known Theodore Watling, however, I saw himin the shadow of another individual; a man who, like a powerful magnet, continually drew our glances. When we spoke, we almost invariablyaddressed him, his rare words fell like bolts upon the consciousness. There was no apparent rift in that personality. 

When, about five o'clock, the conference was ended and we were dismissed, United States Senator, railroad presidents, field-marshals of the law, the great banker fell into an eager conversation with Grolier over theCanon on Divorce, the subject of warm debate in the convention that day. Grolier, it appeared, had led his party against the theological liberals. He believed that law was static, but none knew better its plasticity;that it was infallible, but none so well as he could find a text oneither side. His reputation was not of the popular, newspaper sort, butwas known to connoisseurs, editors, financiers, statesmen and judges, --tothose, in short, whose business it is to make themselves familiar withthe instruments of power. He was the banker's chief legal adviser, thebanker's rapier of tempered steel, sheathed from the vulgar view savewhen it flashed forth on a swift errand. 

"I'm glad to be associated with you in this case, Mr. Paret, " Mr. Groliersaid modestly, as we emerged into the maelstrom of Wall Street. "If youcan make it convenient to call at my office in the morning, we'll go overit a little. And I'll see you in a day or two in Washington, Watling. Keep your eye on the bull, " he added, with a twinkle, "and don't let himbreak any more china than you can help. I don't know where we'd be if itweren't for you fellows. "

By "you fellows, " he meant Mr. Watling's distinguished associates in theSenate. .. . 

Mr. Watling and I dined together at a New York club. It was not a dinnerof herbs. There was something exceedingly comfortable about that club, where the art of catering to those who had earned the right to be cateredto came as near perfection as human things attain. From the great, heavily curtained dining-room the noises of the city had been carefullyexcluded; the dust of the Avenue, the squalour and smells of the brownstone fronts and laddered tenements of those gloomy districts lying apistol-shot east and west. We had a vintage champagne, and afterwards acigar of the club's special importation. 

"Well, " said Mr. Watling, "mow that you're a member of the royal council, what do you think of the King?"

"I've been thinking a great deal about him, " I said, and indeed it wastrue. He had made, perhaps, his greatest impression when I had shaken hishand in parting. The manner in which he had looked at me then had puzzledme; it was as though he were seeking to divine something in me that hadescaped him. "Why doesn't the government take him over?" I exclaimed. 

Mr. Watling smiled. 

"You mean, instead of his mines and railroads and other properties?"

"Yes. But that's your idea. Don't you remember you said something of thekind the night of the election, years ago? It occurred to me to-day, whenI was looking at him. "

"Yes, " he agreed thoughtfully, "if some American genius could find a wayto legalize that power and utilize the men who created it the worst ofour problems would be solved. A man with his ability has a right topower, and none would respond more quickly or more splendidly to a callof the government than he. All this fight is waste, Hugh, damned waste ofthe nation's energy. " Mr. Watling seldom swore. "Look at the President!There's a man of remarkable ability, too. And those two oughtn't to befighting each other. The President's right, in a way. Yes, he is, thoughI've got to oppose him. "

I smiled at this from Theodore Watling, though I admired him the more forit. And suddenly, oddly, I happened to remember what Krebs had said, thatour troubles were not due to individuals, but to a disease that haddeveloped in industrial society. If the day should come when such men asthe President and the great banker would be working together, was it notpossible, too, that the idea of Mr. Watling and the vision of Krebs mightcoincide? I was struck by a certain seeming similarity in their views;but Mr. Watling interrupted this train of thought by continuing toexpress his own. 

"Well, --they're running right into a gale when they might be sailing withit, " he said. 

"You think we'll have more trouble?" I asked. 

"More and more, " he replied. "It'll be worse before it's better I'mafraid. " At this moment a club servant announced his cab, and he rose. "Well, good-bye, my son, " he said. "I'll hope to see you in Washingtonsoon. And remember there's no one thinks any more of you than I do. "

I escorted him to the door, and it was with a real pang I saw him wave tome from his cab as he drove away. My affection for him was never morealive than in this hour when, for the first time in my experience, he hadgiven real evidence of an inner anxiety and lack of confidence in thefuture. 

XXI. 

In spite of that unwonted note of pessimism from Mr. Watling, I went homein a day or two flushed with my new honours, and it was impossible not tobe conscious of the fact that my aura of prestige was increased--tremendously increased--by the recognition I had received. A certainsubtle deference in the attitude of the small minority who owedallegiance to the personage by whom I had been summoned was moresatisfying than if I had been acclaimed at the station by thousands of myfellow-citizens who knew nothing of my journey and of its significance, even though it might have a concern for them. To men like Berringer, Grierson and Tallant and our lesser great lights the banker was asemi-mythical figure, and many times on the day of my return I wasstopped on the street to satisfy the curiosity of my friends as to myimpressions. Had he, for instance, let fall any opinions, prognostications on the political and financial situation? Dickinson andScherer were the only other men in the city who had the honour of apersonal acquaintance with him, and Scherer was away, abroad, gatheringfurniture and pictures for the house in New York Nancy had predicted, andwhich he had already begun to build! With Dickinson I lunched in private, in order to give him a detailed account of the conference. By fiveo'clock I was ringing the door-bell of Nancy's new mansion on GrantAvenue. It was several blocks below my own. 

"Well, how does it feel to be sent for by the great sultan?" she asked, as I stood before her fire. "Of course, I have always known thatultimately he couldn't get along without you. "

"Even if he has been a little late in realizing it, " I retorted. 

"Sit down and tell me all about him, " she commanded. 

"I met him once, when Ham had the yacht at Bar Harbor. "

"And how did he strike you?"

"As somewhat wrapped up in himself, " said Nancy. 

We laughed together. 

"Oh, I fell a victim, " she went on. "I might have sailed off with him, ifhe had asked me. "

"I'm surprised he didn't ask you. "

"I suspect that it was not quite convenient, " she said. "Women aresecondary considerations to sultans, we're all very well when theyhaven't anything more serious to occupy them. Of course that's why theyfascinate us. What did he want with you, Hugh?"

"He was evidently afraid that the government would win the coal roadssuit unless I was retained. "

"More laurels!" she sighed. "I suppose I ought to be proud to know you. "

"That's exactly what I've been trying to impress on you all these years, "I declared. "I've laid the laurels at your feet, in vain. "

She sat with her head back on the cushions, surveying me. 

"Your dress is very becoming, " I said irrelevantly. 

"I hoped it would meet your approval, " she mocked. 

"I've been trying to identify the shade. It's elusive--like you. "

"Don't be banal. .. . What is the colour?"

"Poinsetta!"

"Pretty nearly, " she agreed, critically. 

I took the soft crepe between my fingers. 

"Poet!" she smiled. "No, it isn't quite poinsetta. It's nearer thered-orange of a tree I remember one autumn, in the White Mountains, withthe setting sun on it. But that wasn't what we were talking about. Laurels! Your laurels. "

"My laurels, " I repeated. "Such as they are, I fling them into your lap. "

"Do you think they increase your value to me, Hugh?"

"I don't know, " I said thickly. 

She shook her head. 

"No, it's you I like--not the laurels. "

"But if you care for me--?" I began. 

She lifted up her hands and folded them behind the knot of her hair. 

"It's extraordinary how little you have changed since we were children, Hugh. You are still sixteen years old, that's why I like you. If you gotto be the sultan of sultans yourself, I shouldn't like you any better, orany worse. "

"And yet you have just declared that power appeals to you!"

"Power--yes. But a woman--a woman like me--wants to be first, ornothing. "

"You are first, " I asserted. "You always have been, if you had onlyrealized it. "

She gazed up at me dreamily. 

"If you had only realized it! If you had only realized that all I wantedof you was to be yourself. It wasn't what you achieved. I didn't want youto be like Ralph or the others. "

"Myself? What are you trying to say?"

"Yourself. Yes, that is what I like about you. If you hadn't been in sucha hurry--if you hadn't misjudged me so. It was the power in you, thecraving, the ideal in you that I cared for--not the fruits of it. Thefruits would have come naturally. But you forced them, Hugh, for quickerresults. "

"What kind of fruits?" I asked. 

"Ah, " she exclaimed, "how can I tell what they might have been! You havestriven and striven, you have done extraordinary things, but have theymade you any happier? have you got what you want?"

I stooped down and seized her wrists from behind her head. 

"I want you, Nancy, " I said. "I have always wanted you. You're morewonderful to-day than you have ever been. I could find myself--with you. "

She closed her eyes. A dreamy smile was on her face, and she layunresisting, very still. In that tremendous moment, for which it seemed Ihad waited a lifetime, I could have taken her in my arms--and yet I didnot. I could not tell why: perhaps it was because she seemed to havepassed beyond me--far beyond--in realization. And she was so still!

"We have missed the way, Hugh, " she whispered, at last. 

"But we can find it again, if we seek it together, " I urged. 

"Ah, if I only could!" she said. "I could have once. But now I'mafraid--afraid of getting lost. " Slowly she straightened up, her handsfalling into her lap. I seized them again, I was on my knees in front ofher, before the fire, and she, intent, looking down at me, into me, through me it seemed--at something beyond which yet was me. 

"Hugh, " she asked, "what do you believe? Anything?"

"What do I believe?"

"Yes. I don't mean any cant, cut-and-dried morality. The world is gettingbeyond that. But have you, in your secret soul, any religion at all? Doyou ever think about it? I'm not speaking about anything orthodox, butsome religion--even a tiny speck of it, a germ--harmonizing with life, with that power we feel in us we seek to express and continuallyviolate. "

"Nancy!" I exclaimed. 

"Answer me--answer me truthfully, " she said. .. . 

I was silent, my thoughts whirling like dust atoms in a storm. 

"You have always taken things--taken what you wanted. But they haven'tsatisfied you, convinced you that that is all of life. "

"Do you mean--that we should renounce?" I faltered. 

"I don't know what I mean. I am asking, Hugh, asking. Haven't you anyclew? Isn't there any voice in you, anywhere, deep down, that can tellme? give me a hint? just a little one?"

I was wracked. My passion had not left me, it seemed to be heightened, and I pressed her hands against her knees. It was incredible that myhands should be there, in hers, feeling her. Her beauty seemed as fresh, as un-wasted as the day, long since, when I despaired of her. And yet andyet against the tumult and beating of this passion striving to throb downthought, thought strove. Though I saw her as a woman, my senses and myspirit commingled and swooned together. 

"This is life, " I murmured, scarcely knowing what I said. 

"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and her voice pierced me with pain, "are we tobe lost, overpowered, engulfed, swept down its stream, to come up belowdrifting--wreckage? Where, then, would be your power? I'm not speaking ofmyself. Isn't life more than that? Isn't it in us, too, --in you? Think, Hugh. Is there no god, anywhere, but this force we feel, restlesslycreating only to destroy? You must answer--you must find out. "

I cannot describe the pleading passion in her voice, as though hell andheaven were wrestling in it. The woman I saw, tortured yet uplifted, didnot seem to be Nancy, yet it was the woman I loved more than life itselfand always had loved. 

"I can't think, " I answered desperately, "I can only feel--and I can'texpress what I feel. It's mixed, it's dim, and yet bright andshining--it's you. "

"No, it's you, " she said vehemently. "You must interpret it. " Her voicesank: "Could it be God?" she asked. 

"God!" I exclaimed sharply. 

Her hands fell away from mine. .. . The silence was broken only by thecrackling of the wood fire as a log turned over and fell. Never before, in all our intercourse that I could remember, had she spoken to me aboutreligion. .. . With that apparent snap in continuity incomprehensible tothe masculine mind-her feminine mood had changed. Elements I had neversuspected, in Nancy, awe, even a hint of despair, entered into it, andwhen my hand found hers again, the very quality of its convulsivepressure seemed to have changed. I knew then that it was her soul I lovedmost; I had been swept all unwittingly to its very altar. 

"I believe it is God, " I said. But she continued to gaze at me, her lipsparted, her eyes questioning. 

"Why is it, " she demanded, "that after all these centuries of certaintywe should have to start out to find him again? Why is it when somethinghappens like--like this, that we should suddenly be torn with doubtsabout him, when we have lived the best part of our lives without so muchas thinking of him?"

"Why should you have qualms?" I said. "Isn't this enough? and doesn't itpromise--all?"

"I don't know. They're not qualms--in the old sense. " She smiled down atme a little tearfully. "Hugh, do you remember when we used to go toSunday-school at Dr. Pound's church, and Mrs. Ewan taught us? I reallybelieved something then--that Moses brought down the ten commandments ofGod from the mountain, all written out definitely for ever and ever. AndI used to think of marriage" (I felt a sharp twinge), "of marriage assomething sacred and inviolable, --something ordained by God himself. Itought to be so--oughtn't it? That is the ideal. "

"Yes--but aren't you confusing--?" I began. 

"I am confusing and confused. I shouldn't be--I shouldn't care if thereweren't something in you, in me, in our--friendship, something I can'texplain, something that shines still through the fog and the smoke inwhich we have lived our lives--something which, I think, we saw cleareras children. We have lost it in our hasty groping. Oh, Hugh, I couldn'tbear to think that we should never find it! that it doesn't really exist!Because I seem to feel it. But can we find it this way, my dear?" Herhand tightened on mine. 

"But if the force drawing us together, that has always drawn us together, is God?" I objected. 

"I asked you, " she said. "The time must come when you must answer, Hugh. It may be too late, but you must answer. "

"I believe in taking life in my own hands, " I said. 

"It ought to be life, " said Nancy. "It--it might have been life. .. . It isonly when a moment, a moment like this comes that the quality of what wehave lived seems so tarnished, that the atmosphere which we ourselveshave helped to make is so sordid. When I think of the intrigues, anddivorces, the self-indulgences, --when I think of my own marriage--" hervoice caught. "How are we going to better it, Hugh, this way? Am I to getthat part of you I love, and are you to get what you crave in me? Can wejust seize happiness? Will it not elude us just as much as though webelieved firmly in the ten commandments?"

"No, " I declared obstinately. 

She shook her head. 

"What I'm afraid of is that the world isn't made that way--for you--forme. We're permitted to seize those other things because they're justbaubles, we've both found out how worthless they are. And the worst of itis they've made me a coward, Hugh. It isn't that I couldn't do withoutthem, I've come to depend on them in another way. It's because they giveme a certain protection, --do you see? they've come to stand in the placeof the real convictions we've lost. And--well, we've taken the baubles, can we reach out our hands and take--this? Won't we be punished for it, frightfully punished?"

"I don't care if we are, " I said, and surprised myself. 

"But I care. It's weak, it's cowardly, but it's so. And yet I want toface the situation--I'm trying to get you to face it, to realize howterrible it is. "

"I only know that I want you above everything else in the world--I'lltake care of you--"

I seized her arms, I drew her down to me. 

"Don't!" she cried. "Oh, don't!" and struggled to her feet and stoodbefore me panting. "You must go away now--please, Hugh. I can't bear anymore--I want to think. "

I released her. She sank into the chair and hid her face in her hands. .. . 

As may be imagined, the incident I have just related threw my life into atangle that would have floored a less persistent optimist and romanticistthan myself, yet I became fairly accustomed to treading what the oldmoralists called the devious paths of sin. In my passion I had nothesitated to lay down the doctrine that the courageous and the strongtook what they wanted, --a doctrine of which I had been a consistentdisciple in the professional and business realm. A logical buccaneer, superman, "master of life" would promptly have extended this doctrine tothe realm of sex. Nancy was the mate for me, and Nancy and I, ourdevelopment, was all that mattered, especially my development. Let everyman and woman look out for his or her development, and in the end themajority of people would be happy. This was going Adam Smith one better. When it came to putting that theory into practice, however, one neededconvictions: Nancy had been right when she had implied that convictionswere precisely what we lacked; what our world in general lacked. We haddesires, yes convictions, no. What we wanted we got not by defying theworld, but by conforming to it: we were ready to defy only when ourdesires overcame the resistance of our synapses, and even then not untilwe should have exhausted every legal and conventional means. 

A superman with a wife and family he had acquired before a great passionhas made him a superman is in rather a predicament, especially if he beone who has achieved such superhumanity as he possesses not bychallenging laws and conventions, but by getting around them. My wife andfamily loved me; and paradoxically I still had affection for them, orthought I had. But the superman creed is, "be yourself, realize yourself, no matter how cruel you may have to be in order to do so. " One troublewith me was that remnants of the Christian element of pity still clung tome. I would be cruel if I had to, but I hoped I shouldn't have to:something would turn up, something in the nature of an interveningmiracle that would make it easy for me. Perhaps Maude would take theinitiative and relieve me. .. . Nancy had appealed for a justifyingdoctrine, and it was just what I didn't have and couldn't evolve. In themeanwhile it was quite in character that I should accommodate myself to asituation that might well be called anomalous. 

This "accommodation" was not unaccompanied by fever. My longing torealize my love for Nancy kept me in a constant state of tension--of"nerves"; for our relationship had merely gone one step farther, we hadreached a point where we acknowledged that we loved each other, andparadoxically halted there; Nancy clung to her demand for new sanctionswith a tenacity that amazed and puzzled and often irritated me. And yet, when I look back upon it all, I can see that some of the difficulty laywith me: if she had her weakness--which she acknowledged--I had mine--andkept it to myself. It was part of my romantic nature not to want to breakher down. Perhaps I loved the ideal better than the woman herself, thoughthat scarcely seems possible. 

We saw each other constantly. And though we had instinctively begun to becareful, I imagine there was some talk among our acquaintances. It is tobe noted that the gossip never became riotous, for we had always beenfriends, and Nancy had a saving reputation for coldness. It seemedincredible that Maude had not discovered my secret, but if she knew ofit, she gave no sign of her knowledge. Often, as I looked at her, Iwished she would. I can think of no more expressive sentence in regard toher than the trite one that she pursued the even tenor of her way; and Ifound the very perfection of her wifehood exasperating. Our relationshipwould, I thought, have been more endurable if we had quarrelled. And yetwe had grown as far apart, in that big house, as though we had beenseparated by a continent; I lived in my apartments, she in hers; sheconsulted me about dinner parties and invitations; for, since we hadmoved to Grant Avenue, we entertained and went out more than before. Itseemed as though she were making every effort consistent with herintegrity and self-respect to please me. Outwardly she conformed to themould; but I had long been aware that inwardly a person had developed. Ithad not been a spontaneous development, but one in resistance topressure; and was probably all the stronger for that reason. At times herwill revealed itself in astonishing and unexpected flashes, as when onceshe announced that she was going to change Matthew's school. 

"He's old enough to go to boarding-school, " I said. "I'll look up a placefor him. "

"I don't wish him to go to boarding-school yet, Hugh, " she said quietly. 

"But that's just what he needs, " I objected. "He ought to have therubbing-up against other boys that boarding-school will give him. Matthewis timid, he should have learned to take care of himself. And he willmake friendships that will help him in a larger school. "

"I don't intend to send him, " Maude said. 

"But if I think it wise?"

"You ought to have begun to consider such things many years ago. You havealways been too--busy to think of the children. You have left them to me. I am doing the best I can with them. "

"But a man should have something to say about boys. He understands them. "

"You should have thought of that before. "

"They haven't been old enough. "

"If you had taken your share of responsibility for them, I would listento you. "

"Maude!" I exclaimed reproachfully. 

"No, Hugh, " she went on, "you have been too busy making money. You haveleft them to me. It is my task to see that the money they are to inheritdoesn't ruin them. "

"You talk as though it were a great fortune, " I said. 

But I did not press the matter. I had a presentiment that to press itmight lead to unpleasant results. 

It was this sense of not being free, of having gained everything butfreedom that was at times galling in the extreme: this sense of livingwith a woman for whom I had long ceased to care, a woman with a bafflingwill concealed beneath an unruffled and serene exterior. At moments Ilooked at her across the table; she did not seem to have aged much: hercomplexion was as fresh, apparently, as the day when I had first walkedwith her in the garden at Elkington; her hair the same wonderful colour;perhaps she had grown a little stouter. There could be no doubt about thefact that her chin was firmer, that certain lines had come into her faceindicative of what is called character. Beneath her pliability she wasnow all firmness; the pliability had become a mockery. It cannot be saidthat I went so far as to hate her for this, --when it was in my mind, --butmy feelings were of a strong antipathy. And then again there were raremoments when I was inexplicably drawn to her, not by love and passion; Imelted a little in pity, perhaps, when my eyes were opened and I saw thetragedy, yet I am not referring now to such feelings as these. I amspeaking of the times when I beheld her as the blameless companion of theyears, the mother of my children, the woman I was used to and should--byall canons I had known--have loved. .. . 

And there were the children. Days and weeks passed when I scarcely sawthem, and then some little incident would happen to give me an unexpectedwrench and plunge me into unhappiness. One evening I came home from along talk with Nancy that had left us both wrought up, and I had enteredthe library before I heard voices. Maude was seated under the lamp at theend of the big room reading from "Don Quixote"; Matthew and Biddy were ather feet, and Moreton, less attentive, at a little distance was takingapart a mechanical toy. I would have tiptoed out, but Biddy caught sightof me. 

"It's father!" she cried, getting up and flying to me. 

"Oh, father, do come and listen! The story's so exciting, isn't it, Matthew?"

I looked down into the boy's eyes shining with an expression thatsuddenly pierced my heart with a poignant memory of myself. Matthew wasfar away among the mountains and castles of Spain. 

"Matthew, " demanded his sister, "why did he want to go fighting with allthose people?"

"Because he was dotty, " supplied Moreton, who had an interesting habit ofpicking up slang. 

"It wasn't at all, " cried Matthew, indignantly, interrupting Maude'srebuke of his brother. 

"What was it, then?" Moreton demanded. 

"You wouldn't understand if I told you, " Matthew was retorting, whenMaude put her hand on his lips. 

"I think that's enough for to-night, " she said, as she closed the book. "There are lessons to do--and father wants to read his newspaper inquiet. "

This brought a protest from Biddy. 

"Just a little more, mother! Can't we go into the schoolroom? We shan'tdisturb father there. "

"I'll read to them--a few minutes, " I said. 

As I took the volume from her and sat down Maude shot at me a swift lookof surprise. Even Matthew glanced at me curiously; and in his glance Ihad, as it were, a sudden revelation of the boy's perplexity concerningme. He was twelve, rather tall for his age, and the delicate modelling ofhis face resembled my father's. He had begun to think. . What did he thinkof me?

Biddy clapped her hands, and began to dance across the carpet. 

"Father's going to read to us, father's going to read to us, " she cried, finally clambering up on my knee and snuggling against me. 

"Where is the place?" I asked. 

But Maude had left the room. She had gone swiftly and silently. 

"I'll find it, " said Moreton. 

I began to read, but I scarcely knew what I was reading, my fingerstightening over Biddy's little knee. .. . 

Presently Miss Allsop, the governess, came in. She had been sent byMaude. There was wistfulness in Biddy's voice as I kissed her good night. 

"Father, if you would only read oftener!" she said, "I like it when youread--better than anyone else. ". .. . 

Maude and I were alone that night. As we sat in the library after oursomewhat formal, perfunctory dinner, I ventured to ask her why she hadgone away when I had offered to read. 

"I couldn't bear it, Hugh, " she answered. 

"Why?" I asked, intending to justify myself. 

She got up abruptly, and left me. I did not follow her. In my heart Iunderstood why. .. . 

Some years had passed since Ralph's prophecy had come true, and Perry andthe remaining Blackwoods had been "relieved" of the Boyne Street line. The process need not be gone into in detail, being the time-honoured oneemployed in the Ribblevale affair of "running down" the line, or perhapsit would be better to say "showing it up. " It had not justified itssurvival in our efficient days, it had held out--thanks to Perry--withabsurd and anachronous persistence against the inevitable consolidation. Mr. Tallant's newspaper had published many complaints of the age andscarcity of the cars, etc. ; and alarmed holders of securities, in whosevaults they had lain since time immemorial, began to sell. .. . I sawlittle of Perry in those days, as I have explained, but one day I met himin the Hambleton Building, and he was white. 

"Your friends are doing thus, Hugh, " he said. 

"Doing what?"

"Undermining the reputation of a company as sound as any in this city, acompany that's not overcapitalized, either. And we're giving betterservice right now than any of your consolidated lines. ". .. 

He was in no frame of mind to argue with; the conversation was distinctlyunpleasant. I don't remember what I said sething to the effect that hewas excited, that his language was extravagant. But after he had walkedoff and left me I told Dickinson that he ought to be given a chance, andone of our younger financiers, Murphree, went to Perry and pointed outthat he had nothing to gain by obstruction; if he were only reasonable, he might come into the new corporation on the same terms with the others. 

All that Murphree got for his pains was to be ordered out of the officeby Perry, who declared that he was being bribed to desert the otherstockholders. 

"He utterly failed to see the point of view, " Murphree reported in someastonishment to Dickinson. 

"What else did he say?" Mr. Dickinson asked. 

Murphree hesitated. 

"Well--what?" the banker insisted. 

"He wasn't quite himself, " said Murphree, who was a comparative newcomerin the city and had a respect for the Blackwood name. "He said that thatwas the custom of thieves: when they were discovered, they offered todivide. He swore that he would get justice in the courts. "

Mr. Dickinson smiled. .. . 

Thus Perry, through his obstinacy and inability to adapt himself to newconditions, had gradually lost both caste and money. He resigned from theBoyne Club. I was rather sorry for him. Tom naturally took the matter toheart, but he never spoke of it; I found that I was seeing less of him, though we continued to dine there at intervals, and he still came to myhouse to see the children. Maude continued to see Lucia. For me, thesituation would have been more awkward had I been less occupied, had myrelationship with Maude been a closer one. Neither did she mention Perryin those days. The income that remained to him being sufficient for himand his family to live on comfortably, he began to devote most of histime to various societies of a semipublic nature until--in the spring ofwhich I write his activities suddenly became concentrated in theorganization of a "Citizens Union, " whose avowed object was to make acampaign against "graft" and political corruption the following autumn. This announcement and the call for a mass-meeting in Kingdon Hall wasreceived by the newspapers with a good-natured ridicule, and ininfluential quarters it was generally hinted that this was Mr. Blackwood's method of "getting square" for having been deprived of theBoyne Street line. It was quite characteristic of Ralph Hambleton that heshould go, out of curiosity, to the gathering at Kingdon Hall, and dropinto my office the next morning. 

"Well, Hughie, they're after you, " he said with a grin. 

"After me? Why not include yourself?"

He sat down and stretched his long legs and his long arms, and smiled ashe gaped. 

"Oh, they'll never get me, " he said. And I knew, as I gazed at him, thatthey never would. 

"What sort of things did they say?" I asked. 

"Haven't you read the Pilot and the Mail and State?"

"I just glanced over them. Did they call names?"

"Call names! I should say they did. They got drunk on it, workedthemselves up like dervishes. They didn't cuss you personally, --that'llcome later, of course. Judd Jason got the heaviest shot, but they said hecouldn't exist a minute if it wasn't for the 'respectable'crowd--capitalists, financiers, millionaires and their legal tools. Factis, they spoke a good deal of truth, first and last, in a fool kind ofway. "

"Truth!" I exclaimed irritatedly. 

Ralph laughed. He was evidently enjoying himself. 

"Is any of it news to you, Hughie, old boy?"

"It's an outrage. "

"I think it's funny, " said Ralph. "We haven't had such a circus foryears. Never had. Of course I shouldn't like to see you go behind thebars, --not that. But you fellows can't expect to go on forever skimmingoff the cream without having somebody squeal sometime. You ought to bereasonable. "

"You've skimmed as much cream as anybody else. "

"You've skimmed the cream, Hughie, --you and Dickinson and Scherer andGrierson and the rest, --I've only filled my jug. Well, these fellows aregoing to have a regular roof-raising campaign, take the lid off ofeverything, dump out the red-light district some of our friends are sofond of. "

"Dump it where?" I asked curiously. 

"Oh, " answered Ralph, "they didn't say. Out into the country, anywhere. "

"But that's damned foolishness, " I declared. 

"Didn't say it wasn't, " Ralph admitted. "They talked a lot of that, too, incidentally. They're going to close the saloons and dance halls and makethis city sadder than heaven. When they get through, it'll all be overbut the inquest. "

"What did Perry do?" I asked. 

"Well, he opened the meeting, --made a nice, precise, gentlemanly speech. Greenhalge and a few young highbrows and a reformed crook named Harroddid most of the hair-raising. They're going to nominate Greenhalge formayor; and he told 'em something about that little matter of the schoolboard, and said he would talk more later on. If one of the ablest lawyersin the city hadn't been hired by the respectable crowd and a lot of otherqueer work done, the treasurer and purchasing agent would be doing time. They seemed to be interested, all right. "

I turned over some papers on my desk, just to show Ralph that he hadn'tsucceeded in disturbing me. 

"Who was in the audience? anyone you ever heard of?" I asked. 

"Sure thing. Your cousin Robert Breck; and that son-in-law of his--what'shis name? And some other representatives of our oldest families, --AlecPound. He's a reformer now, you know. They put him on the resolutionscommittee. Sam Ogilvy was there, he'd be classed as respectablyconservative. And one of the Ewanses. I could name a few others, if youpressed me. That brother of Fowndes who looks like an up-state minister. A lot of women--Miller Gorse's sister, Mrs. Datchet, who never approvedof Miller. Quite a genteel gathering, I give you my word, and allastonished and mad as hell when the speaking was over. Mrs. Datchet saidshe had been living in a den of iniquity and vice, and didn't know it. "

"It must have been amusing, " I said. 

"It was, " said Ralph. "It'll be more amusing later on. Oh, yes, there wasanother fellow who spoke I forgot to mention--that queer Dick who was inyour class, Krebs, got the school board evidence, looked as if he'd comein by freight. He wasn't as popular as the rest, but he's got more sensethan all of them put together. "

"Why wasn't he popular?"

"Well, he didn't crack up the American people, --said they deserved allthey got, that they'd have to learn to think straight and be straightbefore they could expect a square deal. The truth was, they secretlyenvied these rich men who were exploiting their city, and just as long asthey envied them they hadn't any right to complain of them. He was goinginto this campaign to tell the truth, but to tell all sides of it, and ifthey wanted reform, they'd have to reform themselves first. I admired hisnerve, I must say. "

"He always had that, " I remarked. "How did they take it?"

"Well, they didn't like it much, but I think most of them had a respectfor him. I know I did. He has a whole lot of assurance, an air of knowingwhat he's talking about, and apparently he doesn't give a continentalwhether he's popular or not. Besides, Greenhalge had cracked him up tothe skies for the work he'd done for the school board. "

"You talk as if he'd converted you, " I said. 

Ralph laughed as he rose and stretched himself. 

"Oh, I'm only the intelligent spectator, you ought to know that by thistime, Hughie. But I thought it might interest you, since you'll have togo on the stump and refute it all. That'll be a nice job. So long. "

And he departed. Of course I knew that he had been baiting me, his scentfor the weaknesses of his friends being absolutely fiendish. I was angrybecause he had succeeded, --because he knew he had succeeded. All themorning uneasiness possessed me, and I found it difficult to concentrateon the affairs I had in hand. I felt premonitions, which I tried in vainto suppress, that the tide of the philosophy of power and might werestarting to ebb: I scented vague calamities ahead, calamities Iassociated with Krebs; and when I went out to the Club for lunch thissense of uneasiness, instead of being dissipated, was increased. Dickinson was there, and Scherer, who had just got back from Europe; thetalk fell on the Citizens Union, which Scherer belittled with an air ofconsequence and pompousness that struck me disagreeably, and with an eyenewly critical I detected in him a certain disintegration, deterioration. Having dismissed the reformers, he began to tell of his experiencesabroad, referring in one way or another to the people of consequence whohad entertained him. 

"Hugh, " said Leonard Dickinson to me as we walked to the bank together, "Scherer will never be any good any more. Too much prosperity. And he'sbegun to have his nails manicured. "

After I had left the bank president an uncanny fancy struck me that inAdolf Scherer I had before me a concrete example of the effect of myphilosophy on the individual. .. . 

Nothing seemed to go right that spring, and yet nothing was absolutelywrong. At times I became irritated, bewildered, out of tune, and unableto understand why. The weather itself was uneasy, tepid, with long spellsof hot wind and dust. I no longer seemed to find refuge in my work. I wasunhappy at home. After walking for many years in confidence and securityalong what appeared to be a certain path, I had suddenly come out into avague country in which it was becoming more and more difficult torecognize landmarks. I did not like to confess this; and yet I heardwithin me occasional whispers. Could it be that I, Hugh Paret, who hadalways been so positive, had made a mess of my life? There were momentswhen the pattern of it appeared to have fallen apart, resolved itselfinto pieces that refused to fit into each other. 

Of course my relationship with Nancy had something to do with this. .. . 

One evening late in the spring, after dinner, Maude came into thelibrary. 

"Are you busy, Hugh?" she asked. 

I put down my newspapers. 

"Because, " she went on, as she took a chair near the table where I waswriting, "I wanted to tell you that I have decided to go to Europe, andtake the children. "

"To Europe!" I exclaimed. The significance of the announcement failed atonce to register in my brain, but I was aware of a shock. 

"Yes. "

"When?" I asked. 

"Right away. The end of this month. "

"For the summer?"

"I haven't decided how long I shall stay. "

I stared at her in bewilderment. In contrast to the agitation I feltrising within me, she was extraordinarily calm, unbelievably so. 

"But where do you intend to go in Europe?"

"I shall go to London for a month or so, and after that to some quietplace in France, probably at the sea, where the children can learn Frenchand German. After that, I have no plans. "

"But--you talk as if you might stay indefinitely. "

"I haven't decided, " she repeated. 

"But why--why are you doing this?"

I would have recalled the words as soon as I had spoken them. There wasthe slightest unsteadiness in her voice as she replied:--"Is it necessaryto go into that, Hugh? Wouldn't it be useless as well as a littlepainful? Surely, going to Europe without one's husband is not an unusualthing in these days. Let it just be understood that I want to go, thatthe children have arrived at an age when it will do them good. "

I got up and began to walk up and down the room, while she watched mewith a silent calm which was incomprehensible. In vain I summoned myfaculties to meet it. 

I had not thought her capable of such initiative. 

"I can't see why you want to leave me, " I said at last, though with afull sense of the inadequacy of the remark, and a suspicion of itshypocrisy. 

"That isn't quite true, " she answered. "In the first place, you don'tneed me. I am not of the slightest use in your life, I haven't been afactor in it for years. You ought never to have married me, --it was all aterrible mistake. I began to realize that after we had been married a fewmonths--even when we were on our wedding trip. But I was tooinexperienced--perhaps too weak to acknowledge it to myself. In the lastfew years I have come to see it plainly. I should have been a fool if Ihadn't. I am not your wife in any real sense of the word, I cannot holdyou, I cannot even interest you. It's a situation that no woman withself-respect can endure. "

"Aren't those rather modern sentiments, for you, Maude?" I said. 

She flushed a little, but otherwise retained her remarkable composure. 

"I don't care whether they are 'modern' or not, I only know that myposition has become impossible. "

I walked to the other end of the room, and stood facing the carefullydrawn curtains of the windows; fantastically, they seemed to representthe impasse to which my mind had come. Did she intend, ultimately, to geta divorce? I dared not ask her. The word rang horribly in my ears, thoughunpronounced; and I knew then that I lacked her courage, and theknowledge was part of my agony. 

I turned. 

"Don't you think you've overdrawn things, Maude exaggerated them? Nomarriages are perfect. You've let your mind dwell until it has becomeinflamed on matters which really don't amount to much. "

"I was never saner, Hugh, " she replied instantly. And indeed I was forcedto confess that she looked it. That new Maude I had seen emerging of lateyears seemed now to have found herself; she was no longer the woman I hadmarried, --yielding, willing to overlook, anxious to please, living in me. 

"I don't influence you, or help you in any way. I never have. "

"Oh, that's not true, " I protested. 

But she cut me short, going on inexorably:--"I am merely yourhousekeeper, and rather a poor one at that, from your point of view. Youignore me. I am not blaming you for it--you are made that way. It's truethat you have always supported me in luxury, --that might have been enoughfor another woman. It isn't enough for me--I, too, have a life to live, asoul to be responsible for. It's not for my sake so much as for thechildren's that I don't want it to be crushed. "

"Crushed!" I repeated. 

"Yes. You are stifling it. I say again that I'm not blaming you, Hugh. You are made differently from me. All you care for, really, is yourcareer. You may think that you care, at times, for--other things, but itisn't so. "

I took, involuntarily, a deep breath. Would she mention Nancy? Was it inreality Nancy who had brought about this crisis? And did Maude suspectthe closeness of that relationship?

Suddenly I found myself begging her not to go; the more astonishingsince, if at any time during the past winter this solution had presenteditself to me as a possibility, I should eagerly have welcomed it! Butshould I ever have had the courage to propose a separation? I even wishedto delude myself now into believing that what she suggested was inreality not a separation. I preferred to think of it as a trip. .. . Avision of freedom thrilled me, and yet I was wracked and torn. I had anidea that she was suffering, that the ordeal was a terrible one for her;and at that moment there crowded into my mind, melting me, incident afterincident of our past. 

"It seems to me that we have got along pretty well together, Maude. Ihave been negligent--I'll admit it. But I'll try to do better in thefuture. And--if you'll wait a month or so, I'll go to Europe with you, and we'll have a good time. "

She looked at me sadly, --pityingly, I thought. 

"No, Hugh, I've thought it all out. You really don't want me. You onlysay this because you are sorry for me, because you dislike to have yourfeelings wrung. You needn't be sorry for me, I shall be much happier awayfrom you. "

"Think it over, Maude, " I pleaded. "I shall miss you and the children. Ihaven't paid much attention to them, either, but I am fond of them, anddepend upon them, too. "

She shook her head. 

"It's no use, Hugh. I tell you I've thought it all out. You don't carefor the children, you were never meant to have any. "

"Aren't you rather severe in your judgments?"

"I don't think so, " she answered. "I'm willing to admit my faults, that Iam a failure so far as you are concerned. Your ideas of life and mine arefar apart. "

"I suppose, " I exclaimed bitterly, "that you are referring to myprofessional practices. "

A note of weariness crept into her voice. I might have known that she wasnear the end of her strength. 

"No, I don't think it's that, " she said dispassionately. "I prefer to putit down, that part of it, to a fundamental difference of ideas. I do notfeel qualified to sit in judgment on that part of your life, althoughI'll admit that many of the things you have done, in common with the menwith whom you are associated, have seemed to me unjust and inconsiderateof the rights and feelings of others. You have alienated some of yourbest friends. If I were to arraign you at all, it would be on the scoreof heartlessness. But I suppose it isn't your fault, that you haven't anyheart. "

"That's unfair, " I put in. 

"I don't wish to be unfair, " she replied. "Only, since you ask me, I haveto tell you that that is the way it seems to me. I don't want tointroduce the question of right and wrong into this, Hugh, I'm notcapable of unravelling it; I can't put myself into your life, and seethings from your point of view, weigh your problems and difficulties. Inthe first place, you won't let me. I think I understand you, partly--butonly partly. You have kept yourself shut up. But why discuss it? I havemade up my mind. "

The legal aspect of the matter occurred to me. What right had she toleave me? I might refuse to support her. Yet even as these thoughts cameI rejected them; I knew that it was not in me to press this point. Andshe could always take refuge with her father; without the children, ofcourse. But the very notion sickened me. I could not bear to think ofMaude deprived of the children. I had seated myself again at the table. Iput my hand to my forehead. 

"Don't make it hard, Hugh, " I heard her say, gently. "Believe me, it isbest. I know. There won't be any talk about it, --right away, at any rate. People will think it natural that I should wish to go abroad for thesummer. And later--well, the point of view about such affairs haschanged. They are better understood. "

She had risen. She was pale, still outwardly composed, --but I had astrange, hideous feeling that she was weeping inwardly. 

"Aren't you coming back--ever?" I cried. 

She did not answer at once. 

"I don't know, " she said, "I don't know, " and left the room abruptly. .. . 

I wanted to follow her, but something withheld me. I got up and walkedaround the room in a state of mind that was near to agony, taking one ofthe neglected books out of the shelves, glancing at its meaninglessprint, and replacing it; I stirred the fire, opened the curtains andgazed out into the street and closed them again. I looked around me, asudden intensity of hatred seized me for this big, silent, luxurioushouse; I recalled Maude's presentiment about it. Then, thinking I mightstill dissuade her, I went slowly up the padded stairway--to find herdoor locked; and a sense of the finality of her decision came over me. Iknew then that I could not alter it even were I to go all the lengths ofabjectness. Nor could I, I knew, have brought myself to have feigned alove I did not feel. 

What was it I felt? I could not define it. Amazement, for one thing, thatMaude with her traditional, Christian view of marriage should have cometo such a decision. I went to my room, undressed mechanically and gotinto bed. .. . 

She gave no sign at the breakfast table of having made the decision ofthe greatest moment in our lives; she conversed as usual, asked about thenews, reproved the children for being noisy; and when the children hadleft the table there were no tears, reminiscences, recriminations. Inspite of the slight antagonism and envy of which I was conscious, --thatshe was thus superbly in command of the situation, that she had developedher pinions and was thus splendidly able to use them, --my admiration forher had never been greater. I made an effort to achieve the frame of mindshe suggested: since she took it so calmly, why should I be tortured bythe tragedy of it? Perhaps she had ceased to love me, after all! Perhapsshe felt nothing but relief. At any rate, I was grateful to her, and Ifound a certain consolation, a sop to my pride in the reflection that theinitiative must have been hers to take. I could not have deserted her. 

"When do you think of leaving?" I asked. 

"Two weeks from Saturday on the Olympic, if that is convenient for you. "Her manner seemed one of friendly solicitude. "You will remain in thehouse this summer, as usual, I suppose?"

"Yes, " I said. 

It was a sunny, warm morning, and I went downtown in the motor almostblithely. It was the best solution after all, and I had been a fool tooppose it. .. . At the office, there was much business awaiting me; yetonce in a while, during the day, when the tension relaxed, therecollection of what had happened flowed back into my consciousness. Maude was going!

I had telephoned Nancy, making an appointment for the afternoon. Sometimes--not too frequently--we were in the habit of going out into thecountry in one of her motors, a sort of landaulet, I believe, in which wewere separated from the chauffeur by a glass screen. She was waiting forme when I arrived, at four; and as soon as we had shot clear of the city, "Maude is going away, " I told her. 

"Going away?" she repeated, struck more by the tone of my voice than bywhat I had said. 

"She announced last night that she was going abroad indefinitely. "

I had been more than anxious to see how Nancy would take the news. Aflush gradually deepened in her cheeks. 

"You mean that she is going to leave you?"

"It looks that way. In fact, she as much as said so. "

"Why?" said Nancy. 

"Well, she explained it pretty thoroughly. Apparently, it isn't a suddendecision, " I replied, trying to choose my words, to speak composedly as Irepeated the gist of our conversation. Nancy, with her face averted, listened in silence--a silence that continued some time after I hadceased to speak. 

"She didn't--she didn't mention--?" the sentence remained unfinished. 

"No, " I said quickly, "she didn't. She must know, of course, but I'm surethat didn't enter into it. "

Nancy's eyes as they returned to me were wet, and in them was anexpression I had never seen before, --of pain, reproach, of questioning. It frightened me. 

"Oh, Hugh, how little you know!" she cried. 

"What do you mean?" I demanded. 

"That is what has brought her to this decision--you and I. "

"You mean that--that Maude loves me? That she is jealous?" I don't knowhow I managed to say it. 

"No woman likes to think that she is a failure, " murmured Nancy. 

"Well, but she isn't really, " I insisted. "She could have made anotherman happy--a better man. It was all one of those terrible mistakes ourmodern life seems to emphasize so. "

"She is a woman, " Nancy said, with what seemed a touch of vehemence. "It's useless to expect you to understand. .. . Do you remember what I saidto you about her? How I appealed to you when you married to try toappreciate her?"

"It wasn't that I didn't appreciate her, " I interrupted, surprised thatNancy should have recalled this, "she isn't the woman for me, we aren'tmade for each other. It was my mistake, my fault, I admit, but I don'tagree with you at all, that we had anything to do with her decision. Itis just the--the culmination of a long period of incompatibility. She hascome to realize that she has only one life to live, and she seemshappier, more composed, more herself than she has ever been since ourmarriage. Of course I don't mean to say it isn't painful for her. .. . ButI am sure she isn't well, that it isn't because of our seeing oneanother, " I concluded haltingly. 

"She is finer than either of us, Hugh, --far finer. "

I did not relish this statement. 

"She's fine, I admit. But I can't see how under the circumstances any ofus could have acted differently. " And Nancy not replying, I continued:"She has made up her mind to go, --I suppose I could prevent it by takingextreme measures, --but what good would it do? Isn't it, after all, themost sensible, the only way out of a situation that has becomeimpossible? Times have changed, Nancy, and you yourself have been thefirst to admit it. Marriage is no longer what it was, and people arecoming to look upon it more sensibly. In order to perpetuate theinstitution, as it was, segregation, insulation, was the only course. Mensegregated their wives, women their husbands, --the only logical method ofprocedure, but it limited the individual. Our mothers and fathers thoughtit scandalous if husband or wife paid visits alone. It wasn't done. Butour modern life has changed all that. A marriage, to be a marriage, should be proof against disturbing influences, should leave theindividuals free; the binding element should be love, not the force of animposed authority. You seemed to agree to all this. "

"Yes, I know, " she admitted. "But I cannot think that happiness will evergrow out of unhappiness. "

"But Maude will not be unhappy, " I insisted. "She will be happier, farhappier, now that she has taken the step. "

"Oh, I wish I thought so, " Nancy exclaimed. "Hugh, you always believewhat you want to believe. And the children. How can you bear to part withthem?"

I was torn, I had a miserable sense of inadequacy. 

"I shall miss them, " I said. "I have never really appreciated them. Iadmit I don't deserve to have them, and I am willing to give them up foryou, for Maude. .. "

We had made one of our favourite drives among the hills on the far sideof the Ashuela, and at six were back at Nancy's house. I did not go in, but walked slowly homeward up Grant Avenue. It had been a tryingafternoon. I had not expected, indeed, that Nancy would have rejoiced, but her attitude, her silences, betraying, as they did, compunctions, seemed to threaten our future happiness. 

XXII. 

One evening two or three days later I returned from the office to gaze upat my house, to realize suddenly that it would be impossible for me tolive there, in those great, empty rooms, alone; and I told Maude that Iwould go to the Club--during her absence. I preferred to keep up thefiction that her trip would only be temporary. She forbore fromcontradicting me, devoting herself efficiently to the task of closing thehouse, making it seem, somehow, a rite, --the final rite in her capacityas housewife. The drawing-room was shrouded, and the library; the bookswrapped neatly in paper; a smell of camphor pervaded the place; thecheerful schoolroom was dismantled; trunks and travelling bags appeared. The solemn butler packed my clothes, and I arranged for a room at theClub in the wing that recently had been added for the accommodation ofbachelors and deserted husbands. One of the ironies of those days wasthat the children began to suggest again possibilities of happiness I hadmissed--especially Matthew. With all his gentleness, the boy seemed tohave a precocious understanding of the verities, and the capacity forsuffering which as a child I had possessed. But he had more self-control. Though he looked forward to the prospect of new scenes and experienceswith the anticipation natural to his temperament, I thought he betrayedat moments a certain intuition as to what was going on. 

"When are you coming over, father?" he asked once. "How soon will yourbusiness let you?"

He had been brought up in the belief that my business was a tyrant. 

"Oh, soon, Matthew, --sometime soon, " I said. 

I had a feeling that he understood me, not intellectually, butemotionally. What a companion he might have been!. .. . Moreton and Biddymoved me less. They were more robust, more normal, less introspective andimaginative; Europe meant nothing to them, but they were franklydelighted and excited at the prospect of going on the ocean, askingdozens of questions about the great ship, impatient to embark. .. .. 

"I shan't need all that, Hugh, " Maude said, when I handed her a letter ofcredit. "I--I intend to live quite simply, and my chief expenses will bethe children's education. I am going to give them the best, of course. "

"Of course, " I replied. "But I want you to live over there as you havebeen accustomed to live here. It's not exactly generosity on my part, --Ihave enough, and more than enough. "

She took the letter. 

"Another thing--I'd rather you didn't go to New York with us, Hugh. Iknow you are busy--"

"Of course I'm going, " I started to protest. 

"No, " she went on, firmly. "I'd rather you didn't. The hotel people willput me on the steamer very comfortably, --and there are other reasons whyI do not wish it. " I did not insist. .. . On the afternoon of herdeparture, when I came uptown, I found her pinning some roses on herjacket. 

"Perry and Lucia sent them, " she informed me. She maintained thefriendly, impersonal manner to the very end; but my soul, as we drove tothe train, was full of un-probed wounds. I had had roses put in hercompartments in the car; Tom and Susan Peters were there with more roses, and little presents for the children. Their cheerfulness seemed forced, and I wondered whether they suspected that Maude's absence would beprolonged. 

"Write us often, and tell us all about it, dear, " said Susan, as she satbeside Maude and held her hand; Tom had Biddy on his knee. Maude waspale, but smiling and composed. 

"I hope to get a little villa in France, near the sea, " she said. "I'llsend you a photograph of it, Susan. "

"And Chickabiddy, when she comes back, will be rattling off French like anative, " exclaimed Tom, giving her a hug. 

"I hate French, " said Biddy, and she looked at him solemnly. "I wish youwere coming along, Uncle Tom. "

Bells resounded through the great station. The porter warned us off. Ikissed the children one by one, scarcely realizing what I was doing. Ikissed Maude. She received my embrace passively. 

"Good-bye, Hugh, " she said. 

I alighted, and stood on the platform as the train pulled out. Thechildren crowded to the windows, but Maude did not appear. .. . I foundmyself walking with Tom and Susan past hurrying travellers and porters tothe Decatur Street entrance, where my automobile stood waiting. 

"I'll take you home, Susan, " I said. 

"We're ever so much obliged, Hugh, " she answered, "but the street-cars goalmost to ferry's door. We're dining there. "

Her eyes were filled with tears, and she seemed taller, more ungainlythan ever--older. A sudden impression of her greatness of heart was bornehome to me, and I grasped the value of such rugged friendship as hers--asTom's. 

"We shouldn't know how to behave in an automobile, " he said, as though tosoften her refusal. And I stood watching their receding figures as theywalked out into the street and hailed the huge electric car that came toa stop beyond them. Above its windows was painted "The Ashuela TractionCompany, " a label reminiscent of my professional activities. Then I heardthe chauffeur ask:--"Where do you wish to go, sir?"

"To the Club, " I said. 

My room was ready, my personal belongings, my clothes had been laid out, my photographs were on the dressing-table. I took up, mechanically, theevening newspaper, but I could not read it; I thought of Maude, of thechildren, memories flowed in upon me, --a flood not to be dammed. .. . Presently the club valet knocked at my door. He had a dinner card. 

"Will you be dining here, sir?" he inquired. 

I went downstairs. Fred Grierson was the only man in the dining-room. 

"Hello, Hugh, " he said, "come and sit down. I hear your wife's goneabroad. "

"Yes, " I answered, "she thought she'd try it instead of the South Shorethis summer. "

Perhaps I imagined that he looked at me queerly. I had made a great dealof money out of my association with Grierson, I had valued very highlybeing an important member of the group to which he belonged; butto-night, as I watched him eating and drinking greedily, I hated him evenas I hated myself. And after dinner, when he started talking with aridicule that was a thinly disguised bitterness about the Citizens Unionand their preparations for a campaign I left him and went to bed. 

Before a week had passed my painful emotions had largely subsided, andwith my accustomed resiliency I had regained the feeling of self-respectso essential to my happiness. I was free. My only anxiety was for Nancy, who had gone to New York the day after my last talk with her; and it wasonly by telephoning to her house that I discovered when she was expectedto return. .. . I found her sitting beside one of the open French windowsof her salon, gazing across at the wooded hills beyond the Ashuela. Shewas serious, a little pale; more exquisite, more desirable than ever; buther manner implied the pressure of control, and her voice was not quitesteady as she greeted me. 

"You've been away a long time, " I said. 

"The dressmakers, " she answered. Her colour rose a little. "I thoughtthey'd never get through. "

"But why didn't you drop me a line, let me know when you were coming?" Iasked, taking a chair beside her, and laying my hand on hers. She drew itgently away. 

"What's the matter?" I asked. 

"I've been thinking it all over--what we're doing. It doesn't seem right, it seems terribly wrong. "

"But I thought we'd gone over all that, " I replied, as patiently as Icould. "You're putting it on an old-fashioned, moral basis. "

"But there must be same basis, " she urged. "There are responsibilities, obligations--there must be!--that we can't get away from. I can't helpfeeling that we ought to stand by our mistakes, and by our bargains; wemade a choice--it's cheating, somehow, and if we take this--what wewant--we shall be punished for it. "

"But I'm willing to be punished, to suffer, as I told you. If you lovedme--"

"Hugh!" she exclaimed, and I was silent. "You don't understand, " she wenton, a little breathlessly, "what I mean by punishment is deterioration. Do you remember once, long ago, when you came to me before I was married, I said we'd both run after false gods, and that we couldn't do withoutthem? Well, and now this has come; it seems so wonderful to me, comingagain like that after we had passed it by, after we thought it had goneforever; it's opened up visions for me that I never hoped to see again. It ought to restore us, dear--that's what I'm trying to say--to redeemus, to make us capable of being what we were meant to be. If it doesn'tdo that, if it isn't doing so, it's the most horrible of travesties, ofmockeries. If we gain life only to have it turn into death--slow death;if we go to pieces again, utterly. For now there's hope. The more Ithink, the more clearly I see that we can't take any step withoutresponsibilities. If we take this, you'll have me, and I'll have you. Andif we don't save each other--"

"But we will, " I said. 

"Ah, " she exclaimed, "if we could start new, without any past. I marriedHam with my eyes open. "

"You couldn't know that he would become--well, as flagrant as he is. Youdidn't really know what he was then. "

"There's no reason why I shouldn't have anticipated it. I can't claimthat I was deceived, that I thought my marriage was made in heaven. Ientered into a contract, and Ham has kept his part of it fairly well. Hehasn't interfered with my freedom. That isn't putting it on a high plane, but there is an obligation involved. You yourself, in your law practice, are always insisting upon the sacredness of contract as the very basis ofour civilization. "

Here indeed would have been a home thrust, had I been vulnerable at thetime. So intent was I on overcoming her objections, that I resortedunwittingly to the modern argument I had more than once declared in courtto be anathema-the argument of the new reform in reference to the commonlaw and the constitution. 

"A contract, no matter how seriously entered into at the time it wasmade, that later is seen to violate the principles of humanity should bevoid. And not only this, but you didn't consent that he should disgraceyou. "

Nancy winced. 

"I never told you that he paid my father's debts, I never told anyone, "she said, in a low voice. 

"Even then, " I answered after a moment, "you ought to see that it's tooterrible a price to pay for your happiness. And Ham hasn't ever pretendedto consider you in any way. It's certain you didn't agree that he shoulddo--what he is doing. "

"Suppose I admitted it, " she said, "there remain Maude and your children. Their happiness, their future becomes my responsibility as well asyours. "

"But I don't love Maude, and Maude doesn't love me. I grant it's myfault, that I did her a wrong in marrying her, but she is right inleaving me. I should be doing her a double wrong. And the children willbe happy with her, they will be well brought up. I, too, have thoughtthis out, Nancy, " I insisted, "and the fact is that in our respectivemarriages we have been, each of us, victims of our time, of oureducation. We were born in a period of transition, we inherited views oflife that do not fit conditions to-day. It takes courage to achievehappiness, initiative to emancipate one's self from a morality thatbegins to hamper and bind. To stay as we are, to refuse to take what isoffered us, is to remain between wind and water. I don't mean that weshould do anything--hastily. We can afford to take a reasonable time, tobe dignified about it. But I have come to the conclusion that the onlything that matters in the world is a love like ours, and its fulfilment. Achievement, success, are empty and meaningless without it. And you dolove me--you've admitted it. "

"Oh, I don't want to talk about it, " she exclaimed, desperately. 

"But we have to talk about it, " I persisted. "We have to thrash it out, to see it straight, as you yourself have said. "

"You speak of convictions, Hugh, --new convictions, in place of the old wehave discarded. But what are they? And is there no such thing asconscience--even though it be only an intuition of happiness orunhappiness? I do care for you, I do love you--"

"Then why not let that suffice?" I exclaimed, leaning towards her. 

She drew back. 

"But I want to respect you, too, " she said. 

I was shocked, too shocked to answer. 

"I want to respect you, " she repeated, more gently. "I don't want tothink that--that what we feel for each other is--unconsecrated. "

"It consecrates itself, " I declared. 

She shook her head. 

"Surely it has its roots in everything that is fine in both of us. "

"We both went wrong, " said Nancy. "We both sought to wrest power andhappiness from the world, to make our own laws. How can we assertthat--this is not merely a continuation of it?"

"But can't we work out our beliefs together?" I demanded. "Won't youtrust me, trust our love for one another?"

Her breath came and went quickly. 

"Oh, you know that I want you, Hugh, as much as you want me, and more. The time may come when I can't resist you. "

"Why do you resist me?" I cried, seizing her hands convulsively, andswept by a gust of passion at her confession. 

"Try to understand that I am fighting for both of us!" she pleaded--anappeal that wrung me in spite of the pitch to which my feelings had beenraised. "Hugh, dear, we must think it out. Don't now. "

I let her hands drop. .. . 

Beyond the range of hills rising from the far side of the Ashuela was thewide valley in which was situated the Cloverdale Country Club, with itspolo field, golf course and tennis courts; and in this same valley someof our wealthy citizens, such as Howard Ogilvy and Leonard Dickinson, hadbought "farms, " week-end playthings for spring and autumn. HambletonDurrett had started the fashion. Capriciously, as he did everything else, he had become the owner of several hundred acres of pasture, woodland andorchard, acquired some seventy-five head of blooded stock, and proceededto house them in model barns and milk by machinery; for several months hehad bored everyone in the Boyne Club whom he could entice intoconversation on the subject of the records of pedigreed cows, and spentmany bibulous nights on the farm in company with those parasites whosurrounded him when he was in town. Then another interest had intervened;a feminine one, of course, and his energies were transferred (so weunderstood) to the reconstruction and furnishing of a little residence inNew York, not far from Fifth Avenue. The farm continued under the expertdirection of a superintendent who was a graduate of the StateAgricultural College, and a select clientele, which could afford to paythe prices, consumed the milk and cream and butter. Quite consistent withtheir marital relations was the fact that Nancy should have taken a fancyto the place after Ham's interest had waned. Not that she cared for theGuernseys, or Jerseys, or whatever they may have been; she evinced asudden passion for simplicity, --occasional simplicity, at least, --for acontrast to and escape from a complicated life of luxury. She builtanother house for the superintendent banished him from the littlefarmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with thesuperintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, theeasels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, withwall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on thehardwood floors. The pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which hadsuggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnishedwith wicker lounging chairs and tables, and shaded with gay awnings. 

Here, to the farm, accompanied by a maid, she had been in the habit ofretiring from time to time, and here she came in early July. Here, dressed in the simplest linen gowns of pink or blue or white, I found aNancy magically restored to girlhood, --anew Nancy, betraying only tracesof the old, a new Nancy in a new Eden. We had all the setting, all theillusion of that perfect ideal of domesticity, love in a cottage. Nancyand I, who all our lives had spurned simplicity, laughed over the joy wefound in it: she made a high art of it, of course; we had our simpledinners, which Mrs. Olsen cooked and served in the open air; sometimes onthe porch, sometimes under the great butternut tree spreading its shadeover what in a more elaborate country-place, would have been called alawn, --an uneven plot of grass of ridges and hollows that ran down to theorchard. Nancy's eyes would meet mine across the little table, and oftenour gaze would wander over the pastures below, lucent green in the levelevening light, to the darkening woods beyond, gilt-tipped in the settingsun. There were fields of ripening yellow grain, of lusty young corn thatgrew almost as we watched it: the warm winds of evening were heavy withthe acrid odours of fecundity. Fecundity! In that lay the elusive yetinsistent charm of that country; and Nancy's, of course, was thetransforming touch that made it paradise. It was thus, in the country, Isuggested that we should spend the rest of our existence. What was theuse of amassing money, when happiness was to be had so simply?

"How long do you think you could stand it?" she asked, as she handed me aplate of blackberries. 

"Forever, with the right woman, " I announced. 

"How long could the woman stand it?". .. . She humoured, smilingly, mycrystal-gazing into our future, as though she had not the heart todeprive me of the pleasure. 

"I simply can't believe in it, Hugh, " she said when I pressed her for ananswer. 

"Why not?"

"I suppose it's because I believe in continuity, I haven't the romantictemperament, --I always see the angel with the flaming sword. It isn'tthat I want to see him. "

"But we shall redeem ourselves, " I said. "It won't be curiosity andidleness. We are not just taking this thing, and expecting to givenothing for it in return. "

"What can we give that is worth it?" she exclaimed, with one of herrevealing flashes. 

"We won't take it lightly, but seriously, " I told her. "We shall findsomething to give, and that something will spring naturally out of ourlove. We'll read together, and think and plan together. "

"Oh, Hugh, you are incorrigible, " was all she said. 

The male tendency in me was forever strained to solve her, to deduce fromher conversation and conduct a body of consistent law. The effort wasuseless. Here was a realm, that of Nancy's soul, in which there wasapparently no such thing as relevancy. In the twilight, after dinner, weoften walked through the orchard to a grassy bank beside the littlestream, where we would sit and watch the dying glow in the sky. After arain its swollen waters were turbid, opaque yellow-red with the clay ofthe hills; at other times it ran smoothly, temperately, almost clearbetween the pasture grasses and wild flowers. Nancy declared that itreminded her of me. We sat there, into the lush, warm nights, and themoon shone down on us, or again through long silences we searched thebewildering, starry chart of the heavens, with the undertones of thenight-chorus of the fields in our ears. Sometimes she let my head restupon her knee; but when, throbbing at her touch, with the life-forcepulsing around us, I tried to take her in my arms, to bring her lips tomine, she resisted me with an energy of will and body that I could notovercome, I dared not overcome. She acknowledged her love for me, shepermitted me to come to her, she had the air of yielding but neveryielded. Why, then, did she allow the words of love to pass? and how drawthe line between caresses? I was maddened and disheartened by thatelusive resistance in her--apparently so frail a thing!--that neitherargument nor importunity could break down. Was there something lacking inme? or was it that I feared to mar or destroy the love she had. This, surely, had not been the fashion of other loves, called unlawful, theclassic instances celebrated by the poets of all ages rose to mock me. 

"Incurably romantic, " she had called me, in calmer moments, when I wasable to discuss our affair objectively. And once she declared that I hadno sense of tragedy. We read "Macbeth" together, I remember, one rainySunday. The modern world, which was our generation, would seem to be cutoff from all that preceded it as with a descending knife. It wasprecisely from "the sense of tragedy" that we had been emancipated: fromthe "agonized conscience, " I should undoubtedly have said, had I beenacquainted then with Mr. Santayana's later phrase. Conscience--the oldkind of conscience, --and nothing inherent in the deeds themselves, madethe tragedy; conscience was superstition, the fear of the wrath of thegods: conscience was the wrath of the gods. Eliminate it, and behold!there were no consequences. The gods themselves, that kind of gods, became as extinct as the deities of the Druids, the Greek fates, theterrible figures of German mythology. Yes, and as the God of Christianorthodoxy. 

Had any dire calamities overtaken the modern Macbeths, of whose personallives we happened to know something? Had not these great ones broken withimpunity all the laws of traditional morality? They ground the faces ofthe poor, played golf and went to church with serene minds, untroubled bycriticism; they appropriated, quite freely, other men's money, and someof them other men's wives, and yet they were not haggard with remorse. The gods remained silent. Christian ministers regarded these moderntransgressors of ancient laws benignly and accepted their contributions. Here, indeed, were the supermen of the mad German prophet and philosophercome to life, refuting all classic tragedy. It is true that some of thesesupermen were occasionally swept away by disease, which in ancient dayswould have been regarded as a retributive scourge, but was in factnothing but the logical working of the laws of hygiene, the result ofoverwork. Such, though stated more crudely, were my contentions whendesire did not cloud my brain and make me incoherent. And I did not failto remind Nancy, constantly, that this was the path on which her feet hadbeen set; that to waver now was to perish. She smiled, yet she showedconcern. 

"But suppose you don't get what you want?" she objected. "What then?Suppose one doesn't become a superman? or a superwoman? What's to happento one? Is there no god but the superman's god, which is himself? Arethere no gods for those who can't be supermen? or for those who mayrefuse to be supermen?"

To refuse, I maintained, were a weakness of the will. 

"But there are other wills, " she persisted, "wills over which thesuperman may conceivably have no control. Suppose, for example, that youdon't get me, that my will intervenes, granting it to be conceivable thatyour future happiness and welfare, as you insist, depend upon yourgetting me--which I doubt. "

"You've no reason to doubt it. "

"Well, granting it, then. Suppose the orthodoxies and superstitionssucceed in inhibiting me. I may not be a superwoman, but my will, or myconscience, if you choose, may be stronger than yours. If you don't getwhat you want, you aren't happy. In other words, you fail. Where are yourgods then? The trouble with you, my dear Hugh, is that you have neverfailed, " she went on, "you've never had a good, hard fall, you've alwaysbeen on the winning side, and you've never had the world against you. Nowonder you don't understand the meaning and value of tragedy. "

"And you?" I asked. 

"No, " she agreed, "nor I. Yet I have come to feel, instinctively, thatsomehow concealed in tragedy is the central fact of life, the truereality, that nothing is to be got by dodging it, as we have dodged it. Your superman, at least the kind of superman you portray, is petrified. Something vital in him, that should be plastic and sensitive, has turnedto stone. "

"Since when did you begin to feel this?" I inquired uneasily. 

"Since--well, since we have been together again, in the last month ortwo. Something seems to warn me that if we take--what we want, we shan'tget it. That's an Irish saying, I know, but it expresses my meaning. Imay be little, I may be superstitious, unlike the great women of historywho have dared. But it's more than mere playing safe--my instinct, Imean. You see, you are involved. I believe I shouldn't hesitate if onlymyself were concerned, but you are the uncertain quantity--more uncertainthan you have any idea; you think you know yourself, you think you haveanalyzed yourself, but the truth is, Hugh, you don't know the meaning ofstruggle against real resistance. "

I was about to protest. 

"I know that you have conquered in the world of men and affairs, " shehurried on, "against resistance, but it isn't the kind of resistance Imean. It doesn't differ essentially from the struggle in the animalkingdom. "

I bowed. "Thank you, " I said. 

She laughed a little. 

"Oh, I have worshipped success, too. Perhaps I still do--that isn't thepoint. An animal conquers his prey, he is in competition, in constantcombat with others of his own kind, and perhaps he brings to bear acertain amount of intelligence in the process. Intelligence isn't thepoint, either. I know what I'm saying is trite, it's banal, it soundslike moralizing, and perhaps it is, but there is so much confusion to-daythat I think we are in danger of losing sight of the simpler verities, and that we must suffer for it. Your super-animal, your supreme-stagsubdues the other stags, but he never conquers himself, he never feelsthe need of it, and therefore he never comprehends what we call tragedy. "

"I gather your inference, " I said, smiling. 

"Well, " she admitted, "I haven't stated the case with the shade ofdelicacy it deserves, but I wanted to make my meaning clear. We haveraised up a class in America, but we have lost sight, alittle--considerably, I think--of the distinguishing humancharacteristics. The men you were eulogizing are lords of the forest, more or less, and we women, who are of their own kind, what they havemade us, surrender ourselves in submission and adoration to the lordlystag in the face of all the sacraments that have been painfullyinaugurated by the race for the very purpose of distinguishing us fromanimals. It is equivalent to saying that there is no moral law; or, ifthere is, nobody can define it. We deny, inferentially, a human realm asdistinguished from the animal, and in the denial it seems to me we arecutting ourselves off from what is essential human development. We arereverting to the animal. I have lost and you have lost--not entirely, perhaps, but still to a considerable extent--the bloom of that fervour, of that idealism, we may call it, that both of us possessed when we werein our teens. We had occasional visions. We didn't know what they meant, or how to set about their accomplishment, but they were not, at least, mere selfish aspirations; they implied, unconsciously no doubt, anelement of service, and certainly our ideal of marriage had somethingfine in it. "

"Isn't it for a higher ideal of marriage that we are searching?" I asked. 

"If that is so, " Nancy objected, "then all the other elements of ourlives are sadly out of tune with it. Even the most felicitous union ofthe sexes demands sacrifice, an adjustment of wills, and these are thevery things we balk at; and the trouble with our entire class in thiscountry is that we won't acknowledge any responsibility, there's nosacrifice in our eminence, we have no sense of the whole. "

"Where did you get all these ideas?" I demanded. 

She laughed. 

"Well, " she admitted, "I've been thrashing around a little; and I've readsome of the moderns, you know. Do you remember my telling you I didn'tagree with them? and now this thing has come on me like a judgment. I'vecaught their mania for liberty, for self-realization--whatever they callit--but their remedies are vague, they fail to convince me thatindividuals achieve any quality by just taking what they want, regardlessof others. ". .. . 

I was unable to meet this argument, and the result was that when I wasaway from her I too began to "thrash around" among the books in a vainsearch for a radical with a convincing and satisfying philosophy. Thus wefly to literature in crises of the heart! There was no lack of writerswho sought to deal--and deal triumphantly with the very situation inwhich I was immersed. I marked many passages, to read them over to Nancy, who was interested, but who accused me of being willing to embrace anyphilosophy, ancient or modern, that ran with the stream of my desires. Itis worth recording that the truth of this struck home. On my way back tothe city I reflected that, in spite of my protests against Maude'sgoing--protests wholly sentimental and impelled by the desire to avoidgiving pain on the spot--I had approved of her departure because I didn'twant her. On the other hand I had to acknowledge if I hadn't wantedNancy, or rather, if I had become tired of her, I should have beenwilling to endorse her scruples. .. . It was not a comforting thought. 

One morning when I was absently opening the mail I found at my office Ipicked up a letter from Theodore Watling, written from a seaside resortin Maine, the contents of which surprised and touched me, troubled me, and compelled me to face a situation with which I was wholly unpreparedto cope. He announced that this was to be his last term in the Senate. Hedid not name the trouble his physician had discovered, but he had beenwarned that he must retire from active life. "The specialist whom I sawin New York, " he went on, "wished me to resign at once, but when Ipointed out to him how unfair this would be to my friends in the state, to my party as a whole--especially in these serious and unsettledtimes--he agreed that I might with proper care serve out the remainder ofmy term. I have felt it my duty to write to Barbour and Dickinson and oneor two others in order that they might be prepared and that no time maybe lost in choosing my successor. It is true that the revolt within theparty has never gained much headway in our state, but in these days it isdifficult to tell when and where a conflagration may break out, or howfar it will go. I have ventured to recommend to them the man who seems tome the best equipped to carry on the work I have been trying to dohere--in short, my dear Hugh, yourself. The Senate, as you know, is not abed of roses just now for those who think as we do; but I have the lesshesitancy in making the recommendation because I believe you are not oneto shun a fight for the convictions we hold in common, and because youwould regard, with me, the election of a senator with the new views as avery real calamity. If sound business men and lawyers should beeliminated from the Senate, I could not contemplate with any peace ofmind what might happen to the country. In thus urging you, I know youwill believe me when I say that my affection and judgment are equallyinvolved, for it would be a matter of greater pride than I can express tohave you follow me here as you have followed me at home. And I beg of youseriously to consider it. .. . I understand that Maude and the children areabroad. Remember me to them affectionately when you write. If you canfind it convenient to come here, to Maine, to discuss the matter, you maybe sure of a welcome. In any case, I expect to be in Washington inSeptember for a meeting of our special committee. Sincerely andaffectionately yours, Theodore Watling. "

It was characteristic of him that the tone of the letter should beuniformly cheerful, that he should say nothing whatever of the blow thismust be to his ambitions and hopes; and my agitation at the new anddisturbing prospect thus opened up for me was momentarily swept away byfeelings of affection and sorrow. A sharp realization came to me of howmuch I admired and loved this man, and this was followed by a pang at thethought of the disappointment my refusal would give him. Complications Idid not wish to examine were then in the back of my mind; and while Istill sat holding the letter in my hand the telephone rang, and a messagecame from Leonard Dickinson begging me to call at the bank at once. 

Miller Gorse was there, and Tallant, waving a palm-leaf while sittingunder the electric fan. They were all very grave, and they began to talkabout the suddenness of Mr. Watling's illness and to speculate upon itsnature. Leonard Dickinson was the most moved of the three; but they wereall distressed, and showed it--even Tallant, whom I had never creditedwith any feelings; they spoke about the loss to the state. At lengthGorse took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it; the smoke, impelled bythe fan, drifted over the panelled partition into the bank. 

"I suppose Mr. Watling mentioned to you what he wrote to us, " he said. 

"Yes, " I admitted. 

"Well, " he asked, "what do you think of it?"

"I attribute it to Mr. Watling's friendship, " I replied. 

"No, " said Gorse, in his businesslike manner, "Watling's right, there'sno one else. " Considering the number of inhabitants of our state, thisremark had its humorous aspect. 

"That's true, " Dickinson put in, "there's no one else available whounderstands the situation as you do, Hugh, no one else we can trust as wetrust you. I had a wire from Mr. Barbour this morning--he agrees. We'llmiss you here, but now that Watling will be gone we'll need you there. And he's right--it's something we've got to decide on right away, and getstarted on soon, we can't afford to wobble and run any chances of arevolt. "

"It isn't everybody the senatorship comes to on a platter--especially atyour age, " said Tallant. 

"To tell you the truth, " I answered, addressing Dickinson, "I'm notprepared to talk about it now. I appreciate the honour, but I'm not atall sure I'm the right man. And I've been considerably upset by this newsof Mr. Watling. "

"Naturally you would be, " said the banker, sympathetically, "and we shareyour feelings. I don't know of any man for whom I have a greateraffection than I have for Theodore Wading. We shouldn't have mentioned itnow, Hugh, if Watling hadn't started the thing himself, if it weren'timportant to know where we stand right away. We can't afford to lose theseat. Take your time, but remember you're the man we depend upon. "

Gorse nodded. I was aware, all the time Dickinson was speaking, of beingsurrounded by the strange, disquieting gaze of the counsel for theRailroad. .. . 

I went back to my office to spend an uneasy morning. My sorrow for Mr. Watling was genuine, but nevertheless I found myself compelled toconsider an honour no man lightly refuses. Had it presented itself at anyother time, had it been due to a happier situation than that broughtabout by the illness of a man whom I loved and admired, I should havethought the prospect dazzling indeed, part and parcel of my amazing luck. But now--now I was in an emotional state that distorted the factors oflife, all those things I hitherto had valued; even such a prize as this Iweighed in terms of one supreme desire: how would the acceptance of thesenatorship affect the accomplishment of this desire? That was thequestion. I began making rapid calculations: the actual election wouldtake place in the legislature a year from the following January; providedI were able to overcome Nancy's resistance--which I was determined todo--nothing in the way of divorce proceedings could be thought of formore than a year; and I feared delay. On the other hand, if we waiteduntil after I had been duly elected to get my divorce and marry Nancy mychances of reelection would be small. What did I care for the senatorshipanyway--if I had her? and I wanted her now, as soon as I could get her. She--a life with her represented new values, new values I did not define, that made all I had striven for in the past of little worth. This was abauble compared with the companionship of the woman I loved, the womanintended for me, who would give me peace of mind and soul and developthose truer aspirations that had long been thwarted and starved for lackof her. Gradually, as she regained the ascendency over my mind sheordinarily held--and from which she had been temporarily displaced by thearrival of Mr. Watling's letter and the talk in the bank--I becameimpatient and irritated by the intrusion. But what answer should I giveto Dickinson and Gorse? what excuse for declining such an offer? Idecided, as may be imagined, to wait, to temporize. 

The irony of circumstances--of what might have been--prevented now mylaying this trophy at Nancy's feet, for I knew I had only to mention thematter to be certain of losing her. 

XXIII. 

I had bought a small automobile, which I ran myself, and it was my customto arrive at the farm every evening about five o'clock. But as I lookback upon those days they seem to have lost succession, to be fusedtogether, as it were, into one indeterminable period by the intensepressure of emotion; unsatisfied emotion, --and the state of physical andmental disorganization set up by it is in the retrospect not a littleterrifying. The world grew more and more distorted, its affairs wereneglected, things upon which I had set high values became as nothing. Andeven if I could summon back something of the sequence of our intercourse, it would be a mere repetition--growing on my part more irrational andinsistent--of what I have already related. There were long, troubled, andfutile silences when we sat together on the porch or in the woods andfields; when I wondered whether it were weakness or strength that causedNancy to hold out against my importunities: the fears she professed ofretribution, the benumbing effects of the conventional years, or thedeep-rooted remnants of a Calvinism which--as she proclaimed--had lostdefinite expression to persist as an intuition. I recall something shesaid when she turned to me after one of these silences. 

"Do you know how I feel sometimes? as though you and I had wanderedtogether into a strange country, and lost our way. We have lost our way, Hugh--it's all so clandestine, so feverish, so unnatural, so unrelated tolife, this existence we're leading. I believe it would be better if itwere a mere case of physical passion. I can't help it, " she went on, whenI had exclaimed against this, "we are too--too complicated, you are toocomplicated. It's because we want the morning stars, don't you see?" Shewound her fingers tightly around mine. "We not only want this, but all oflife besides--you wouldn't be satisfied with anything less. Oh, I knowit. That's your temperament, you were made that way, and I shouldn't besatisfied if you weren't. The time would come when you would blame me Idon't mean vulgarly--and I couldn't stand that. If you weren't that way, if that weren't your nature, I mean, I should have given way long ago. "

I made some sort of desperate protest. 

"No, if I didn't know you so well I believe I should have given in longago. I'm not thinking of you alone, but of myself, too. I'm afraid Ishouldn't be happy, that I should begin to think--and then I couldn'tstop. The plain truth, as I've told you over and over again, is that I'mnot big enough. " She continued smiling at me, a smile on which I couldnot bear to look. "I was wrong not to have gone away, " I heard her say. "I will go away. "

I was, at the time, too profoundly discouraged to answer. .. . 

One evening after an exhausting talk we sat, inert, on the grass hummockbeside the stream. Heavy clouds had gathered in the sky, the light haddeepened to amethyst, the valley was still, swooning with expectancy, louder and louder the thunder rolled from behind the distant hills, andpresently a veil descended to hide them from our view. Great drops beganto fall, unheeded. 

"We must go in, " said Nancy, at length. 

I followed her across the field and through the orchard. From the porchwe stood gazing out at the whitening rain that blotted all save thenearer landscape, and the smell of wet, midsummer grasses will always beassociated with the poignancy of that moment. .. . At dinner, between theintervals of silence, our talk was of trivial things. We made a merepretence of eating, and I remember having my attention arrested by thesight of a strange, pitying expression on the face of Mrs. Olsen, whowaited on us. Before that the woman had been to me a mere ministeringautomaton. But she must have had ideas and opinions, this transportedSwedish peasant. .. . Presently, having cleared the table, she retired. .. . The twilight deepened to dusk, to darkness. The storm, having spent theintensity of its passion in those first moments of heavy downpour andwind, had relaxed to a gentle rain that pattered on the roof, and fromthe stream came recurringly the dirge of the frogs. All I could see ofNancy was the dim outline of her head and shoulders: she seemedfantastically to be escaping me, to be fading, to be going; in suddendesperation I dropped on my knees beside her, and I felt her handsstraying with a light yet agonized touch, over my head. 

"Do you think I haven't suffered, too? that I don't suffer?" I heard herask. 

Some betraying note for which I had hitherto waited in vain must havepierced to my consciousness, yet the quiver of joy and the swift, convulsive movement that followed it seemed one. Her strong, lithe bodywas straining in my arms, her lips returning my kisses. .. . Clinging toher hands, I strove to summon my faculties of realization; and I began tospeak in broken, endearing sentences. 

"It's stronger than we are--stronger than anything else in the world, "she said. 

"But you're not sorry?" I asked. 

"I don't want to think--I don't care, " she replied. "I only know that Ilove you. I wonder if you will ever know how much!"

The moments lengthened into hours, and she gently reminded me that it waslate. The lights in the little farmhouses near by had long beenextinguished. I pleaded to linger; I wanted her, more of her, all of herwith a fierce desire that drowned rational thought, and I feared thatsomething might still come between us, and cheat me of her. 

"No, no, " she cried, with fear in her voice. "We shall have to think itout very carefully--what we must do. We can't afford to make anymistakes. "

"We'll talk it all over to-morrow, " I said. 

With a last, reluctant embrace I finally left her, walked blindly towhere the motor car was standing, and started the engine. I looked back. Outlined in the light of the doorway I saw her figure in what seemed anattitude of supplication. .. . 

I drove cityward through the rain, mechanically taking the familiar turnsin the road, barely missing a man in a buggy at a four-corners. Heshouted after me, but the world to which he belonged didn't exist. Ilived again those moments that had followed Nancy's surrender, seeking torecall and fix in my mind every word that had escaped from her lips--thetrivial things that to lovers are so fraught with meaning. I lived it allover again, as I say, but the reflection of it, though intenselyemotional, differed from the reality in that now I was somewhat able toregard the thing, to regard myself, objectively; to define certainfeelings that had flitted in filmy fashion through my consciousness, delicate shadows I recognized at the time as related to sadness. When shehad so amazingly yielded, the thought for which my mind had been vaguelygroping was that the woman who lay there in my arms, obscured by thedarkness, was not Nancy at all! It was as if this one precious woman Ihad so desperately pursued had, in the capture, lost her identity, hadmysteriously become just woman, in all her significance, yes, andhelplessness. The particular had merged (inevitably, I might have known)into the general: the temporary had become the lasting, with a chain ofconsequences vaguely implied that even in my joy gave me pause. For thefirst time in my life I had a glimpse of what marriage mightmean, --marriage in a greater sense than I had ever conceived it, a sortof cosmic sense, implying obligations transcending promises andcontracts, calling for greatness of soul of a kind I had not hithertoimagined. Was there in me a grain of doubt of my ability to respond tosuch a high call? I began to perceive that such a union as wecontemplated involved more obligations than one not opposed totraditional views of morality. I fortified myself, however, --if indeed Ireally needed fortification in a mood prevailingly triumphant andexalted, --with the thought that this love was different, the real thing, the love of maturity steeped in the ideals of youth. Here was a love forwhich I must be prepared to renounce other things on which I set a highvalue; prepared, in case the world, for some reason, should not look uponus with kindliness. It was curious that such reflections as these shouldhave been delayed until after the achievement of my absorbing desire, more curious that they should have followed so closely on the heels ofit. The affair had shifted suddenly from a basis of adventure, ofuncertainty; to one of fact, of commitment; I am exaggerating my concernin order to define it; I was able to persuade myself without muchdifficulty that these little, cloudy currents in the stream of my joywere due to a natural reaction from the tremendous strain of the pastweeks, mere morbid fancies. 

When at length I reached my room at the Club I sat looking out at therain falling on the shining pavements under the arc-lights. Though wavesof heat caused by some sudden recollection or impatient longing still ranthrough my body, a saner joy of anticipation was succeeding emotionaltumult, and I reflected that Nancy had been right in insisting that wewalk circumspectly in spite of passion. After all, I had outwittedcircumstance, I had gained the prize, I could afford to wait a little. Weshould talk it over to-morrow, --no, to-day. The luminous face of the cityhall clock reminded me that midnight was long past. .. . 

I awoke with the consciousness of a new joy, suddenly to identify it withNancy. She was mine! I kept repeating it as I dressed; summoning her, notas she had lain in my arms in the darkness--though the intoxicatingsweetness of that pervaded me--but as she had been before thecompleteness of her surrender, dainty, surrounded by things expressing anelusive, uniquely feminine personality. I could afford to smile at theweather, at the obsidian sky, at the rain still falling persistently; andyet, as I ate my breakfast, I felt a certain impatience to verify what Iknew was a certainty, and hurried to the telephone booth. I resented theinstrument, its possibilities of betrayal, her voice sounded somatter-of-fact as she bade me good morning and deplored the rain. 

"I'll be out as soon as I can get away, " I said. "I have a meeting atthree, but it should be over at four. " And then I added irresistibly:"Nancy, you're not sorry? You--you still--?"

"Yes, don't be foolish, " I heard her reply, and this time the telephonedid not completely disguise the note for which I strained. I saidsomething more, but the circuit was closed. .. . 

I shall not attempt to recount the details of our intercourse during theweek that followed. There were moments of stress and strain when itseemed to me that we could not wait, moments that strengthened Nancy'sresolution to leave immediately for the East: there were other, calmerperiods when the wisdom of her going appealed to me, since our ultimateunion would be hastened thereby. We overcame by degrees thedistastefulness of the discussion of ways and means. .. . We spent anunforgettable Sunday among the distant high hills, beside a little lakeof our own discovery, its glinting waters sapphire and chrysoprase. Agrassy wood road, at the inviting entrance to which we left theautomobile, led down through an undergrowth of laurel to a pebbly shore, and there we lunched; there we lingered through the long summerafternoon, Nancy with her back against a tree, I with my head in her lapgazing up at filmy clouds drifting imperceptibly across the sky, listening to the droning notes of the bees, notes that sometimes rose ina sharp crescendo, and again were suddenly hushed. The smell of thewood-mould mingled with the fainter scents of wild flowers. She hadbrought along a volume by a modern poet: the verses, as Nancy read them, moved me, --they were filled with a new faith to which my being responded, the faith of the forth-farer; not the faith of the anchor, but of thesail. I repeated some of the lines as indications of a creed to which Ihad long been trying to convert her, though lacking the expression. Shehad let the book fall on the grass. I remember how she smiled down at mewith the wisdom of the ages in her eyes, seeking my hand with a gesturethat was almost maternal. 

"You and the poets, " she said, "you never grow up. I suppose that's thereason why we love you--and these wonderful visions of freedom you have. Anyway, it's nice to dream, to recreate the world as one would like tohave it. "

"But that's what you and I are doing, " I insisted. 

"We think we're doing it--or rather you think so, " she replied. "Andsometimes, I admit that you almost persuade me to think so. Never quite. What disturbs me, " she continued, "is to find you and the poets foundingyour new freedom on new justifications, discarding the old law only tomake a new one, --as though we could ever get away from necessities, escape from disagreeable things, except in dreams. And then, thisdelusion of believing that we are masters of our own destiny--" Shepaused and pressed my fingers. 

"There you go-back to predestination!" I exclaimed. 

"I don't go back to anything, or forward to anything, " she exclaimed. "Women are elemental, but I don't expect you to understand it. Laws andcodes are foreign to us, philosophies and dreams may dazzle us for themoment, but what we feel underneath and what we yield to are the primalforces, the great necessities; when we refuse joys it's because we knowthese forces by a sort of instinct, when we're overcome it's with a fullknowledge that there's a price. You've talked a great deal, Hugh, aboutcarving out our future. I listened to you, but I resisted you. It wasn'tthe morality that was taught me as a child that made me resist, it wassomething deeper than that, more fundamental, something I feel but can'tyet perceive, and yet shall perceive some day. It isn't that I'm clingingto the hard and fast rules because I fail to see any others, it isn'tthat I believe that all people should stick together whether they arehappily married or not, but--I must say it even now--I have a feeling Ican't define that divorce isn't for us. I'm not talking about right andwrong in the ordinary sense--it's just what I feel. I've ceased tothink. "

"Nancy!" I reproached her. 

"I can't help it--I don't want to be morbid. Do you remember my askingyou about God?--the first day this began? and whether you had a god?Well, that's the trouble with us all to-day, we haven't any God, we'rewanderers, drifters. And now it's just life that's got hold of us, mydear, and swept us away together. That's our justification--if we neededone--it's been too strong for us. " She leaned back against the tree andclosed her eyes. "We're like chips in the torrent of it, Hugh. ". .. . 

It was not until the shadow of the forest had crept far across the lakeand the darkening waters were still that we rose reluctantly to put thedishes in the tea basket and start on our homeward journey. The tawnyfires of the sunset were dying down behind us, the mist stealing, ghostlike, into the valleys below; in the sky a little moon curled like afreshly cut silver shaving, that presently turned to gold, the white starabove it to fire. 

Where the valleys widened we came to silent, decorous little towns andvillages where yellow-lit windows gleaming through the trees suggestedrefuge and peace, while we were wanderers in the night. It was Nancy'smood; and now, in the evening's chill, it recurred to me poignantly. Inone of these villages we passed a church, its doors flung open; thecongregation was singing a familiar hymn. I slowed down the car; I felther shoulder pressing against my own, and reached out my hand and foundhers. 

"Are you warm enough?" I asked. .. . 

We spoke but little on that drive, we had learned the futility of wordsto express the greater joys and sorrows, the love that is compounded ofthese. 

It was late when we turned in between the white dates and made our way upthe little driveway to the farmhouse. I bade her good night on the stepsof the porch. 

"You do love me, don't you?" she whispered, clinging to me with a sudden, straining passion. "You will love me, always no matter what happens?"

"Why, of course, Nancy, " I answered. 

"I want to hear you say it, 'I love you, I shall love you always. '"

I repeated it fervently. .. . 

"No matter what happens?"

"No matter what happens. As if I could help it, Nancy! Why are you so sadto-night?"

"Ah, Hugh, it makes me sad--I can't tell why. It is so great, it is soterrible, and yet it's so sweet and beautiful. "

She took my face in her hands and pressed a kiss against my forehead. .. . 

The next day was dark. At two o'clock in the afternoon the electric lightwas still burning over my desk when the telephone rang and I heardNancy's voice. 

"Is that you, Hugh?"

"Yes. "

"I have to go East this afternoon. "

"Why?" I asked. Her agitation had communicated itself to me. "I thoughtyou weren't going until Thursday. What's the matter?"

"I've just had a telegram, " she said. "Ham's been hurt--I don't know howbadly--he was thrown from a polo pony this morning at Narragansett, inpractice, and they're taking him to Boston to a private hospital. Thetelegram's from Johnny Shephard. I'll be at the house in town at four. "

Filled with forebodings I tried in vain to suppress I dropped the work Iwas doing and got up and paced the room, pausing now and again to gazeout of the window at the wet roofs and the grey skies. I was aghast atthe idea of her going to Ham now even though he were hurt badly hurt; andyet I tried to think it was natural, that it was fine of her to respondto such a call. And she couldn't very well refuse his summons. But it wasnot the news of her husband's accident that inspired the greater fear, which was quelled and soothed only to rise again when I recalled the noteI had heard in her voice, a note eloquent of tragedy--of tragedy she hadforeseen. At length, unable to remain where I was any longer, I descendedto the street and walked uptown in the rain. The Durrett house wasclosed, the blinds of its many windows drawn, but Nancy was watching forme and opened the door. So used had I grown to seeing her in the simplelinen dresses she had worn in the country, a costume associated withexclusive possession, that the sight of her travelling suit and hatrenewed in me an agony of apprehension. The unforeseen event seemed tohave transformed her once more. Her veil was drawn up, her face was pale, in her eyes were traces of tears. 

"You're going?" I asked, as I took her hands. 

"Hugh, I have to go. "

She led me through the dark, shrouded drawing room into the little salonwhere the windows were open on the silent city-garden. I took her in myarms; she did not resist, as I half expected, but clung to me with whatseemed desperation. 

"I have to go, dear--you won't make it too hard for me! It'sonly--ordinary decency, and there's no one else to go to him. "

She drew me to the sofa, her eyes beseeching me. 

"Listen, dear, I want you to see it as I see it. I know that you will, that you do. I should never be able to forgive myself if I stayed awaynow, I--neither of us could ever be happy about it. You do see, don'tyou?" she implored. 

"Yes, " I admitted agitatedly. 

Her grasp on my hand tightened. 

"I knew you would. But it makes me happier to hear you say it. "

We sat for a moment in helpless silence, gazing at one another. Slowlyher eyes had filled. 

"Have you heard anything more?" I managed to ask. 

She drew a telegram from her bag, as though the movement were a relief. 

"This is from the doctor in Boston--his name is Magruder. They have gotHam there, it seems. A horse kicked him in the head, after he fell, --hehad just recovered consciousness. "

I took the telegram. The wordy seemed meaningless, all save those of thelast sentence. "The situation is serious, but by no means hopeless. "Nancy had not spoken of that. The ignorant cruelty of its convention! Theman must have known what Hambleton Durrett was! Nancy read my thoughts, and took the paper from my hand. 

"Hugh, dear, if it's hard for you, try to understand that it's terriblefor me to think that he has any claim at all. I realize now, as I neverdid before, how wicked it was in me to marry him. I hate him, I can'tbear the thought of going near him. "

She fell into wild weeping. I tried to comfort her, who could not comfortmyself; I don't remember my inadequate words. We were overwhelmed, obliterated by the sense of calamity. .. . It was she who checked herselfat last by an effort that was almost hysterical. 

"I mustn't yield to it!" she said. "It's time to leave and the train goesat six. No, you mustn't come to the station, Hugh--I don't think I couldstand it. I'll send you a telegram. " She rose. "You must go now--youmust. "

"You'll come back to me?" I demanded thickly, as I held her. 

"Hugh, I am yours, now and always. How can you doubt it?"

At last I released her, when she had begged me again. And I found myselfa little later walking past the familiar, empty houses of thosestreets. .. . 

The front pages of the evening newspapers announced the accident toHambleton Durrett, and added that Mrs. Durrett, who had been lingering inthe city, had gone to her husband's bedside. The morning papers containedmore of biography and ancestry, but had little to add to the bulletin;and there was no lack of speculation at the Club and elsewhere as toHam's ability to rally from such a shock. I could not bear to listen tothese comments: they were violently distasteful to me. The unforeseenaccident and Nancy's sudden departure had thrown my life completely outof gear: I could not attend to business, I dared not go away lest thenews from Nancy be delayed. I spent the hours in an exhausting mentalstate that alternated between hope and fear, a state of unmitigated, intense desire, of balked realization, sometimes heightening into thatsheer terror I had felt when I had detected over the telephone that notein her voice that seemed of despair. Had she had a presentiment, allalong, that something would occur to separate us? As I went back over thehours we had passed together since she had acknowledged her love, inspite of myself the conviction grew on me that she had never believed inthe reality of our future. Indeed, she had expressed her disbelief inwords. Had she been looking all along for a sign--a sign of wrath? Andwould she accept this accident of Ham's as such?

Retrospection left me trembling and almost sick. 

It was not until the second morning after her departure that I received atelegram giving the name of her Boston hotel, and saying that there wasto be a consultation that day, and as soon as it had taken place shewould write. Such consolation as I could gather from it was derived fromfour words at the end, --she missed me dreadfully. Some tremor of pity forher entered into my consciousness, without mitigating greatly thewildness of my resentment, of my forebodings. 

I could bear no longer the city, the Club, the office, the daily contactwith my associates and clients. Six hours distant, near Rossiter, was asmall resort in the mountains of which I had heard. I telegraphed Nancyto address me there, notified the office, packed my bag, and waitedimpatiently for midday, when I boarded the train. At seven I reached alittle station where a stage was waiting to take me to Callender's Mill. 

It was not until morning that I beheld my retreat, when little wisps ofvapour were straying over the surface of the lake, and the steep greenslopes that rose out of the water on the western side were still inshadow. The hotel, a much overgrown and altered farm-house, stood, surrounded by great trees, in an ancient clearing that sloped gently tothe water's edge, where an old-fashioned, octagonal summerhouseoverlooked a landing for rowboats. The resort, indeed, was a survival ofsimpler times. .. . 

In spite of the thirty-odd guests, people of very moderate incomes whoknew the place and had come here year after year, I was as much alone asif I had been the only sojourner. The place was so remote, so peaceful incontrast to the city I had left, which had become intolerable. And atnight, during hours of wakefulness, the music of the waters falling overthe dam was soothing. I used to walk down there and sit on the stones ofthe ruined mill; or climb to the crests on the far side of the pond togaze for hours westward where the green billows of the Alleghenies lostthemselves in the haze. I had discovered a new country; here, when ourtrials should be over, I would bring Nancy, and I found distraction inchoosing sites for a bungalow. In my soul hope flowered with littlewatering. Uncertain news was good news. After two days of an impatienceall but intolerable, her first letter arrived, I learned that thespecialists had not been able to make a diagnosis, and I began to takeheart again. At times, she said, Ham was delirious and difficult tomanage; at other times he sank into a condition of coma; and again heseemed to know her and Ralph, who had come up from Southampton, where hehad been spending the summer. One doctor thought that Ham's remarkablevitality would pull him through, in spite of what his life had been. Theshock--as might have been surmised--had affected the brain. .. . Theletters that followed contained no additional news; she did not dwell onthe depressing reactions inevitable from the situation in which she foundherself--one so much worse than mine; she expressed a continual longingfor me; and yet I had trouble to convince myself that they did not lackthe note of reassurance for which I strained as I eagerly scannedthem--of reassurance that she had no intention of permitting herhusband's condition to interfere with that ultimate happiness on which itseemed my existence depended. I tried to account for the absence of thisnote by reflecting that the letters were of necessity brief, hurriedlyscratched off at odd moments; and a natural delicacy would prevent herfrom referring to our future at such a time. They recorded no change inHam's condition save that the periods of coma had ceased. The doctorswere silent, awaiting the arrival in this country of a certain New Yorkspecialist who was abroad. She spent most of her days at the hospital, returning to the hotel at night exhausted: the people she knew in thevarious resorts around Boston had been most kind, sending her flowers, and calling when in town to inquire. At length came the news that the NewYork doctor was home again; and coming to Boston. In that letter was asentence which rang like a cry in my ears: "Oh, Hugh, I think thesedoctors know now what the trouble is, I think I know. They are onlywaiting for Dr. Jameson to confirm it. "

It was always an effort for me to control my impatience after the firstrattling was heard in the morning of the stage that brought the mail, andI avoided the waiting group in front of the honeycombed partition ofboxes beside the "office. " On the particular morning of which I am nowwriting the proprietor himself handed me a letter of ominous thicknesswhich I took with me down to the borders of the lake before tearing openthe flap. In spite of the calmness and restraint of the first lines, because of them, I felt creeping over me an unnerving sensation I knewfor dread. .. . 

"Hugh, the New York doctor has been here. It is as I have feared for someweeks, but I couldn't tell you until I was sure. Ham is not exactlyinsane, but he is childish. Sometimes I think that is even worse. I havehad a talk with Dr. Jameson, who has simply confirmed the opinion whichthe other physicians have gradually been forming. The accident hasprecipitated a kind of mental degeneration, but his health, otherwise, will not be greatly affected. 

"Jameson was kind, but very frank, for which I was grateful. He did nothesitate to say that it would have been better if the accident had beenfatal. Ham won't be helpless, physically. Of course he won't be able toplay polo, or take much active exercise. If he were to be helpless, Icould feel that I might be of some use, at least of more use. He knowshis friends. Some of them have been here to see him, and he talks quiterationally with them, with Ralph, with me, only once in a while he sayssomething silly. It seems odd to write that he is not responsible, sincehe never has been, --his condition is so queer that I am at a loss todescribe it. The other morning, before I arrived from the hotel and whenthe nurse was downstairs, he left the hospital, and we found him severalblocks along Commonwealth Avenue, seated on a bench, without a hat--hewas annoyed that he had forgotten it, and quite sensible otherwise. Webegan by taking him out every morning in an automobile. To-day he had awalk with Ralph, and insisted on going into a club here, to which theyboth belong. Two or three men were there whom they knew, and he talked tothem about his fall from the pony and told them just how it happened. 

"At such times only a close observer can tell from his manner thateverything is not right. 

"Ralph, who always could manage him, prevented his taking anything todrink. He depends upon Ralph, and it will be harder for me when he is notwith us. His attitude towards me is just about what it has always been. Itry to amuse him by reading the newspapers and with games; we have achess-board. At times he seems grateful, and then he will suddenly growtired and hard to control. Once or twice I have had to call in Dr. Magruder, who owns the hospital. 

"It has been terribly hard for me to write all this, but I had to do it, in order that you might understand the situation completely. Hugh dear, Isimply can't leave him. This has been becoming clearer and clearer to meall these weeks, but it breaks my heart to have to write it. I havestruggled against it, I have lain awake nights trying to findjustification for going to you, but it is stronger than I. I am afraid ofit--I suppose that's the truth. Even in those unforgettable days at thefarm I was afraid of it, although I did not know what it was to be. Callit what you like, say that I am weak. I am willing to acknowledge that itis weakness. I wish no credit for it, it gives me no glow, the thought ofit makes my heart sick. I'm not big enough I suppose that's the realtruth. I once might have been; but I'm not now, --the years of the life Ichose have made a coward of me. It's not a question of morals or dutyit's simply that I can't take the thing for which my soul craves. It'stoo late. If I believed in prayer I'd pray that you might pity andforgive me. I really can't expect you to understand what I can't myselfexplain. Oh, I need pity--and I pity you, my dear. I can only hope thatyou will not suffer as I shall, that you will find relief away to workout your life. But I will not change my decision, I cannot change it. Don't come on, don't attempt to see me now. I can't stand any more than Iam standing, I should lose my mind. "

Here the letter was blotted, and some words scratched out. I was unableto reconstruct them. 

"Ralph and I, " she proceeded irrelevantly, "have got Ham to agree to goto Buzzard's Bay, and we have taken a house near Wareham. Write and tellme that you forgive and pity me. I love you even more, if such a thing ispossible, than I have ever loved you. This is my only comfort andcompensation, that I have had and have been able to feel such a love, andI know I shall always feel it. --Nancy. " The first effect of this letterwas a paralyzing one. I was unable to realize or believe the thing thathad happened to me, and I sat stupidly holding the sheet in my hand untilI heard voices along the path, and then I fled instinctively, like ananimal, to hide my injury from any persons I might meet. I wandered downthe shore of the lake, striking at length into the woods, seeking someinviolable shelter; nor was I conscious of physical effort until I foundmyself panting near the crest of the ridge where there was a pasture, which some ancient glacier had strewn with great boulders. Beside one ofthese I sank. Heralded by the deep tones of bells, two steers appearedabove the shoulder of a hill and stood staring at me with bovinecuriosity, and fell to grazing again. A fleet of white clouds, like shipspressed with sail, hurried across the sky as though racing for somedetermined port; and the shadows they cast along the hillsidesaccentuated the high brightness of the day, emphasized the vivid andhateful beauty of the landscape. My numbness began to be penetrated byshooting pains, and I grasped little by little the fulness of mycalamity, until I was in the state of wild rebellion of one whom life forthe first time has foiled in a supreme desire. There was no fate aboutthis thing, it was just an absurd accident. The operation of the laws ofnature had sent a man to the ground: another combination of circumstanceswould have killed him, still another, and he would have arisen unhurt. But because of this particular combination my happiness was ruined, andNancy's! She had not expected me to understand. Well, I didn'tunderstand, I had no pity, in that hour I felt a resentment almostamounting to hate; I could see only unreasoning superstition in the womanI wanted above everything in the world. Women of other days had indeedrenounced great loves: the thing was not unheard of. But that this shouldhappen in these times--and to me! It was unthinkable that Nancy of allwomen shouldn't be emancipated from the thralls of religious inhibition!And if it wasn't "conscience, " what was it?

Was it, as she said, weakness, lack of courage to take life when it wasoffered her?. .. . I was suddenly filled with the fever of composingarguments to change a decision that appeared to me to be the result of amonstrous caprice and delusion; writing them out, as they occurred to me, in snatches on the backs of envelopes--her envelopes. Then I proceeded tomake the draft of a letter, the effort required for composition easing meuntil the draft was finished; when I started for the hotel, climbingfences, leaping streams, making my way across rock faces and throughwoods; halting now and then as some reenforcing argument occurred to meto write it into my draft at the proper place until the sheets wereinterlined and blurred and almost illegible. It was already three o'clockwhen I reached my room, and the mail left at four. I began to copy andrevise my scrawl, glancing from time to time at my watch, which I hadlaid on the table. Hurriedly washing my face and brushing my hair, Iarrived downstairs just as the stage was leaving. .. . 

After the letter had gone still other arguments I might have added beganto occur to me, and I regretted that I had not softened some of thethings I wrote and made others more emphatic. In places argument haddegenerated into abject entreaty. Never had my desire been so importunateas now, when I was in continual terror of losing her. Nor could I see howI was to live without her, life lacking a motive being incomprehensible:yet the fire of optimism in me, though died down to ashes, would not beextinguished. At moments it flared up into what almost amounted to aconviction that she could not resist my appeal. I had threatened to go toher, and more than once I started packing. .. . 

Three days later I received a brief note in which she managed to conveyto me, though tenderly and compassionately, that her decision wasunalterable. If I came on, she would refuse to see me. I took theafternoon stage and went back to the city, to plunge into affairs again;but for weeks my torture was so acute that it gives me pain to recall it, to dwell upon it to-day. .. . And yet, amazing as it may seem, there came atime when hope began to dawn again out of my despair. Perhaps my life hadnot been utterly shattered, after all: perhaps Ham Durrett would getwell: such things happened, and Nancy would no longer have an excuse forcontinuing to refuse me. Little by little my anger at what I had nowbecome convinced was her weakness cooled, and--though paradoxically I hadcontinued to love her in spite of the torture for which she wasresponsible, in spite of the resentment I felt, I melted toward her. Trueto my habit of reliance on miracles, I tried to reconcile myself to aperiod of waiting. 

Nevertheless I was faintly aware--consequent upon if not as a result ofthis tremendous experience--of some change within me. It was not onlythat I felt at times a novel sense of uneasiness at being a prey toaccidents, subject to ravages of feeling; the unity of mind that hadhitherto enabled me to press forward continuously toward a concrete goalshowed signs of breaking up:--the goal had lost its desirability. Iseemed oddly to be relapsing into the states of questioning that hadcharacterized my earlier years. Perhaps it would be an exaggeration tosay that I actually began to speculate on the possible existence of arealm where the soul might find a refuge from the buffetings of life, from which the philosophy of prosperity was powerless to save it. .. . 

XXIV. 

It was impossible, of course, that my friends should have failed toperceive the state of disorganization I was in, and some of them at leastmust have guessed its cause. Dickinson, on his return from Maine, at oncebegged me to go away. I rather congratulated myself that Tom had chosenthese months for a long-delayed vacation in Canada. His passion forfishing still persisted. 

In spite of the fact I have noted, that I had lost a certain zest forresults, to keep busy seemed to be the only way to relieve my mind of anotherwise intolerable pressure: and I worked sometimes far into theevening. In the background of my thoughts lay the necessity of coming toa decision on the question of the senatorship; several times Dickinsonand Gorse had spoken of it, and I was beginning to get letters frominfluential men in other parts of the state. They seemed to take it forgranted that there was no question of my refusing. The time came when Ihad grown able to consider the matter with a degree of calmness. Whatstruck me first, when I began to debate upon it, was that the senatorshipoffered a new and possibly higher field for my energies, while at thesame time the office would be a logical continuation of a signal legalcareer. I was now unable to deny that I no longer felt any exhilarationat the prospect of future legal conquests similar to those of the past;but once in the Senate, I might regain something of that intenseconviction of fighting for a just and sound cause with which TheodoreWading had once animated me: fighting there, in the Capitol atWashington, would be different; no stigma of personal gain attached toit; it offered a nearer approach to the ideal I had once more begun toseek, held out hopes of a renewal of my unity of mind. Mr. Watling haddeclared that there was something to fight for; I had even glimpsed thatsomething, but I had to confess that for some years I had not beenconsciously fighting for it. I needed something to fight for. 

There was the necessity, however, of renewing my calculations. IfHambleton Durrett should recover, even during the ensuing year, and ifNancy relented it would not be possible for us to be divorced and marriedfor some time. I still clung tenaciously to the belief that there were norelationships wholly unaffected by worldly triumphs, and as Senator Ishould have strengthened my position. It did not strike me--even afterall my experience--that such a course as I now contemplated had aparallel in the one that I had pursued in regard to her when I was young. 

It seemed fitting that Theodore Watling should be the first to know of mydecision. I went to Washington to meet him. It pained me to see himlooking more worn, but he was still as cheerful, as mentally vigorous asever, and I perceived that he did not wish to dwell upon his illness. Idid venture to expostulate with him on the risk he must be running inserving out his term. We were sitting in the dining room of his house. 

"We've only one life to live, Hugh, " he answered, smiling at me, "and wemight as well get all out of it we can. A few years more or less doesn'tmake much difference--and I ought to be satisfied. I'd resign now, toplease my wife, to please my friends, but we can't trust this governor toappoint a safe man. How little we suspected when we elected him that he'dbecome infected. You never can tell, in these days, can you?"

It was the note of devotion to his cause that I had come to hear: I feltit renewing me, as I had hoped. The threat of disease, the louderclamourings of the leaders of the mob had not sufficed to dismayhim--though he admitted more concern over these. My sympathy andaffection were mingled with the admiration he never failed to inspire. 

"But you, Hugh, " he said concernedly, "you're not looking very well, myson. You must manage to take a good rest before coming here--before thecampaign you'll have to go through. We can't afford to have anythinghappen to you--you're too young. "

I wondered whether he had heard anything. .. . He spoke to me again aboutthe work to be done, the work he looked to me to carry on. 

"We'll have to watch for our opportunity, " he said, "and when it comes wecan handle this new movement not by crushing it, but by guiding it. I'vecome to the conclusion that there is a true instinct in it, that thereare certain things we have done which have been mistakes, and which wecan't do any more. But as for this theory that all wisdom resides in thepeople, it's buncombe. What we have to do is to work out a practicalprogramme. "

His confidence in me had not diminished. It helped to restore confidencein myself. 

The weather was cool and bracing for September, and as we drove in amotor through the beautiful avenues of the city he pointed out a housefor me on one of the circles, one of those distinguished residences, instances of a nascent good taste, that are helping to redeem thepolyglot aspect of our national capital. Mr. Watling spoke--rathertactfully, I thought--of Maude and the children, and ventured the surmisethat they would be returning in a few months. I interpreted this, indeed, as in rather the nature of a kindly hint that such a procedure would bewise in view of the larger life now dawning for me, but I made nocomment. .. . He even sympathized with Nancy Durrett. 

"She did the right thing, Hugh, " he said, with the admirable casualmanner he possessed of treating subjects which he knew to be delicate. "Nancy's a fine woman. Poor devil!" This in reference to Ham. .. . 

Mr. Watling reassured me on the subject of his own trouble, maintainingthat he had many years left if he took care. He drove me to the station. I travelled homeward somewhat lifted out of myself by this visit to him;with some feeling of spaciousness derived from Washington itself, withits dignified Presidential Mansion among the trees, its granite shaftdrawing the eye upward, with its winged Capitol serene upon the hill. Should we deliver these heirlooms to the mob? Surely Democracy meant morethan that!

All this time I had been receiving, at intervals, letters from Maude andthe children. Maude's were the letters of a friend, and I found it easyto convince myself that their tone was genuine, that the separation hadbrought contentment to her; and those independent and self-sufficientelements in her character I admired now rather than deplored. At Etretat, which she found much to her taste, she was living quietly, but makingfriends with some American and English, and one French family of the samename, Buffon, as the great naturalist. The father was a retired silkmanufacturer; they now resided in Paris, and had been very kind inhelping her to get an apartment in that city for the winter. She hadchosen one on the Avenue Kleber, not far from the Arc. It is interesting, after her arraignment of me, that she should have taken such pains torecord their daily life for my benefit in her clear, conscientioushandwriting. I beheld Biddy, her dresses tucked above slim little knees, playing in the sand on the beach, her hair flying in the wind and lightedby the sun which gave sparkle to the sea. I saw Maude herself in herbeach chair, a book lying in her lap, its pages whipped by the breeze. And there was Moreton, who must be proving something of a handful, sincehe had fought with the French boys on the beach and thrown a "rock"through the windows of the Buffon family. I remember one of hisletters--made perfect after much correcting and scratching, --in which hedenounced both France and the French, and appealed to me to come over atonce to take him home. Maude had enclosed it without comment. This letterhad not been written under duress, as most of his were. 

Matthew's letters--he wrote faithfully once a week--I kept in a littlepile by themselves and sometimes reread them. I wondered whether it werebecause of the fact that I was his father--though a most inadequateone--that I thought them somewhat unusual. He had learned French--Maudewrote--with remarkable ease. I was particularly struck in these letterswith the boy's power of observation, with his facile use of language, with the vivid simplicity of his descriptions of the life around him, ofhis experiences at school. The letters were thoughtful--not dashed off ina hurry; they gave evidence in every line of the delicacy of feeling thatwas, I think, his most appealing quality, and I put them down with theimpression strong on me that he, too, longed to return home, but wouldnot say so. There was a certain pathos in this youthful restraint thatnever failed to touch me, even in those times when I had been mostobsessed with love and passion. .. . The curious effect of these letterswas that of knowing more than they expressed. He missed me, he wished toknow when I was coming over. And I was sometimes at a loss whether to begrateful to Maude or troubled because she had as yet given him no hint ofour separation. What effect would it have on him when it should berevealed to him?. .. . It was through Matthew I began to apprehend certainelements in Maude I had both failed to note and appreciate; her littlemannerisms that jarred, her habits of thought that exasperated, wereforgotten, and I was forced to confess that there was something fine inthe achievement of this attitude of hers that was without ill will orresentment, that tacitly acknowledged my continued rights and interest inthe children. It puzzled and troubled me. 

The Citizens Union began its campaign early that autumn, long before theHons. Jonathan Parks and Timothy MacGuire--Republican and Democraticcandidates for Mayor--thought of going on the stump. For several weeksthe meetings were held in the small halls and club rooms of varioussocieties and orders in obscure portions of the city. 

The forces of "privilege and corruption" were not much alarmed. PerryBlackwood accused the newspapers of having agreed to a "conspiracy ofsilence"; but, as Judah B. Tallant remarked, it was the business of thepress to give the public what it wanted, and the public as yet hadn'tshown much interest in the struggle being waged in its behalf. When themeetings began to fill up it would be time to report them in the columnsof the Era. Meanwhile, however, the city had been quietly visited by anenterprising representative of a New York periodical of the new type thatdeveloped with the opening years of the century--one making a specialtyof passionate "muck-raking. " And since the people of America love nothingbetter than being startled, Yardley's Weekly had acquired a circulationtruly fabulous. The emissary of the paper had attended several of theCitizens meetings; interviewed, it seemed, many persons: the result was arevelation to make the blood of politicians, capitalists and corporationlawyers run cold. I remember very well the day it appeared on our newsstands, and the heated denunciations it evoked at the Boyne Club. RalphHambleton was the only one who took it calmly, who seemed to derive acertain enjoyment from the affair. Had he been a less privileged person, they would have put him in chancery. Leonard Dickinson asserted thatYardley's should be sued for libel. 

"There's just one objection to that, " said Ralph. 

"What?" asked the banker. 

"It isn't libel. "

"I defy them to prove it, " Dickinson snapped. "It's a d--d outrage! Thereisn't a city or village in the country that hasn't exactly the sameconditions. There isn't any other way to run a city--"

"That's what Mr. Krebs says, " Ralph replied, "that the people ought toput Judd Jason officially in charge. He tells 'em that Jason is probablya more efficient man than Democracy will be able to evolve in a coon'sage, that we ought to take him over, instead of letting the capitalistshave him. "

"Did Krebs say that?" Dickinson demanded. 

"You can't have read the article very thoroughly, Leonard, " Ralphcommented. "I'm afraid you only picked out the part of it thatcompliments you. This fellow seems to have been struck by Krebs, sayshe's a coming man, that he's making original contributions to thepeople's cause. Quite a tribute. You ought to read it. "

Dickinson, who had finished his lunch, got up and left the table afterlighting his cigar. Ralph's look followed him amusedly. 

"I'm afraid it's time to cash in and be good, " he observed. 

"We'll get that fellow Krebs yet, " said Grierson, wrathfully. MillerGorse alone made no remarks, but in spite of his silence he emanated ananimosity against reform and reformers that seemed to charge the veryatmosphere, and would have repressed any man but Ralph. .. . 

I sat in my room at the Club that night and reread the article, and ifits author could have looked into my soul and observed the emotions hehad set up, he would, no doubt, have experienced a grim satisfaction. ForI, too, had come in for a share of the comment. Portions of the matterreferring to me stuck in my brain like tar, such as the reference to myfather, to the honoured traditions of the Parets and the Brecks which Ihad deliberately repudiated. I had less excuse than many others. The partI had played in various reprehensible transactions such as the RiversideFranchise and the dummy telephone company affair was dwelt upon, and Iwas dismissed with the laconic comment that I was a graduate ofHarvard. .. . 

My associates and myself were referred to collectively as a "gang, " withthe name of our city prefixed; we were linked up with and compared to thegangs of other cities--the terminology used to describe us being that ofthe police reporter. We "operated, " like burglars; we "looted": only, itwas intimated in one place, "second-story men" were angels compared tous, who had never seen the inside of a penitentiary. Here we were, allarraigned before the bar of public opinion, the relentless Dickinson, thesurfeited Scherer, the rapacious Grierson, the salacious Tallant. I haveforgotten what Miller Gorse was called; nothing so classic as a Minotaur;Judd Jason was a hairy spider who spread his net and lurked in darknessfor his victims. Every adjective was called upon to do its duty. .. . EvenTheodore Watling did not escape, but it was intimated that he would bedealt with in another connection in a future number. 

The article had a crude and terrifying power, and the pain it aroused, following almost immediately upon the suffering caused by my separationfrom Nancy, was cumulative in character and effect, seeming actively toreenforce the unwelcome conviction I had been striving to suppress, thatthe world, which had long seemed so acquiescent in conforming itself tomy desires, was turning against me. 

Though my hunger for Nancy was still gnawing, I had begun to fear that Ishould never get her now; and the fact that she would not even write tome seemed to confirm this. 

Then there was Matthew--I could not bear to think that he would ever readthat article. 

In vain I tried that night to belittle to myself its contentions andprobable results, to summon up the heart to fight; in vain I sought toreconstruct the point of view, to gain something of that renewed hope andpower, of devotion to a cause I had carried away from Washington after mytalk with Theodore Watling. He, though stricken, had not wavered in hisfaith. Why should I?

Whether or not as the result of the article in Yardley's, which had beenread more or less widely in the city, the campaign of the Citizens Uniongained ground, and people began to fill the little halls to hear Krebs, who was a candidate for district attorney. Evidently he was entertainingand rousing them, for his reputation spread, and some of the larger hallswere hired. Dickinson and Gorse became alarmed, and one morning thebanker turned up at the Club while I was eating my breakfast. 

"Look here, Hugh, " he said, "we may as well face the fact that we've gota fight ahead of us, --we'll have to start some sort of a back-fire rightaway. "

"You think Greenhalge has a chance of being elected?" I asked. 

"I'm not afraid of Greenhalge, but of this fellow Krebs. We can't affordto have him district attorney, to let a demagogue like him get a start. The men the Republicans and Democrats have nominated are worse thanuseless. Parks is no good, and neither is MacGuire. If only we could haveforeseen this thing we might have had better candidates put up--butthere's no use crying over spilt milk. You'll have to go on the stump, Hugh--that's all there is to it. You can answer him, and the newspaperswill print your speeches in full. Besides it will help you when it comesto the senatorship. "

The mood of extreme dejection that had followed the appearance of thearticle in Yardley's did not last. I had acquired aggressiveness: anaggressiveness, however, differing in quality from the feeling I oncewould have had, --for this arose from resentment, not from belief. It wasimpossible to live in the atmosphere created by the men with whom Iassociated--especially at such a time--without imbibing something of theemotions animating them, --even though I had been free from these emotionsmyself. I, too, had begun to be filled with a desire for revenge; andwhen this desire was upon me I did not have in my mind a pack ofreformers, or even the writer of the article in Yardley's. I thought ofHermann Krebs. He was my persecutor; it seemed to me that he always hadbeen. .. . 

"Well, I'll make speeches if you like, " I said to Dickinson. 

"I'm glad, " he replied. "We're all agreed, Gorse and the rest of us, thatyou ought to. We've got to get some ginger into this fight, and a gooddeal more money, I'm afraid. Jason sends word we'll need more. By theway, Hugh, I wish you'd drop around and talk to Jason and get his idea ofhow the land lies. "

I went, this time in the company of Judah B. Tallant. Naturally we didn'texpect to see Mr. Jason perturbed, nor was he. He seemed to be in an odd, rather exultant mood--if he can be imagined as exultant. We were not longin finding out what pleased him--nothing less than the fact that Mr. Krebs had proposed him for mayor!

"D--d if I wouldn't make a good one, too, " he said. "D--d if I wouldn'tshow 'em what a real mayor is!"

"I guess there's no danger of your ever being mayor, Judd, " Tallantobserved, with a somewhat uneasy jocularity. 

"I guess there isn't, Judah, " replied the boss, quickly, but with apeculiar violet flash in his eyes. "They won't ever make you mayor, either, if I can help it. And I've a notion I can. I'd rather see Krebsmayor. "

"You don't think he meant to propose you seriously, " Tallant exclaimed. 

"I'm not a d--d fool, " said the boss. "But I'll say this, that he halfmeant it. Krebs has a head-piece on him, and I tell you if any of thisreform dope is worth anything his is. There's some sense in what he'stalking, and if all the voters was like him you might get a man like mefor mayor. But they're not, and I guess they never will be. "

"Sure, " said Mr. Jason. "The people are dotty--there ain't one in tenthousand understands what he's driving at when he gets off things likethat. They take it on the level. "

Tallant reflected. 

"By gum, I believe you're right, " he said. "You think they will blow up?"he added. 

"Krebs is the whole show, I tell you. They wouldn't be anywhere withouthim. The yaps that listen to him don't understand him, but somehow hegets under their skins. Have you seen him lately?"

"Never saw him, " replied Tallant. 

"Well, if you had, you'd know he was a sick man. "

"Sick!" I exclaimed. "How do you know?"

"It's my business to know things, " said Judd Jason, and added to Tallant, "that your reporters don't find out. "

"What's the matter with him?" Tallant demanded. A slight exultation inhis tone did not escape me. 

"You've got me there, " said Jason, "but I have it pretty straight. Anyone of your reporters will tell you that he looks sick. ". .. . 

The Era took Mr. Jason's advice and began to publish those portions ofKrebs's speeches that were seemingly detrimental to his own cause. Otherconservative newspapers followed suit. .. . 

Both Tallant and I were surprised to hear these sentiments out of themouth of Mr. Jason. 

"You don't think that crowd's going to win, do you?" asked the owner ofthe Era, a trifle uneasily. 

"Win!" exclaimed the boss contemptuously. "They'll blow up, and you'llnever hear of 'em. I'm not saying we won't need a little--powder, " headded--which was one of the matters we had come to talk about. He gave uslikewise a very accurate idea of the state of the campaign, mentioningcertain things that ought to be done. "You ought to print some of Krebs'sspeeches, Judah, like what he said about me. They're talking it allaround that you're afraid to. "

"Print things like his proposal to make you mayor!"

The information that I was to enter the lists against Krebs was receivedwith satisfaction and approval by those of our friends who were called into assist at a council of war in the directors' room of the Corn NationalBank. I was flattered by the confidence these men seemed to have in myability. All were in a state of anger against the reformers; none of themseriously alarmed as to the actual outcome of the campaign, --especiallywhen I had given them the opinion of Mr. Jason. What disturbed them wasthe possible effect upon the future of the spread of heretical, socialistic doctrines, and it was decided to organize a publicity bureau, independently of the two dominant political parties, to be in charge of acertain New York journalist who made a business of such affairs, who wasto be paid a sum commensurate with the emergency. He was to have carteblanche, even in the editorial columns of our newspapers. He was also toflood the city with "literature. " We had fought many wars before this, and we planned our campaign precisely as though we were dealing with oneof those rebellions in the realm of finance of which I have given aninstance. But now the war chest of our opponents was negligible; and wewere comforted by the thought that, however disagreeable the affair mightbe while it lasted, in the long run capital was invincible. 

Before setting to work to prepare my speeches it was necessary to make anattempt to familiarize myself with the seemingly unprecedented line ofargument Krebs had evolved--apparently as disconcerting to his friends asto his opponents. It occurred to me, since I did not care to attendKrebs's meetings, to ask my confidential stenographer, Miss McCoy, to goto Turner's Hall and take down one of his speeches verbatim. Miss McCoyhad never intruded on me her own views, and I took for granted that theycoincided with my own. 

"I'd like to get an accurate record of what he is saying, " I told her. "Do you mind going?"

"No, I'll be glad to go, Mr. Paret, " she said quietly. 

"He's doing more harm than we thought, " I remarked, after a moment. "I'veknown him for a good many years. He's clever. He's sowing seeds ofdiscontent, starting trouble that will be very serious unless it isheaded off. "

Miss McCoy made no comment. .. . 

Before noon the next day she brought in the speech, neatly typewritten, and laid it on my desk. Looking up and catching her eye just as she wasabout to withdraw, I was suddenly impelled to ask:--"Well, what did youthink of it?"

She actually flushed, for the first time in my dealings with herbetraying a feeling which I am sure she deemed most unprofessional. 

"I liked it, Mr. Paret, " she replied simply, and I knew that she hadunderstated. It was quite apparent that Krebs had captivated her. I triednot to betray my annoyance. 

"Was there a good audience?" I asked. 

"Yes, " she said. 

"How many do you think?"

She hesitated. 

"It isn't a very large hall, you know. I should say it would hold abouteight hundred people. "

"And--it was full?"--I persisted. 

"Oh, yes, there were numbers of people standing. "

I thought I detected in her tone-although it was not apologetic--a desireto spare my feelings. She hesitated a moment more, and then left theroom, closing the door softly behind her. .. 

Presently I took up the pages and began to read. The language was simpleand direct, an appeal to common sense, yet the words strangely seemedcharged with an emotional power that I found myself resisting. When atlength I laid down the sheets I wondered whether it were imagination, orthe uncomfortable result of memories of conversations I had had with him. 

I was, however, confronted with the task of refuting his arguments: butwith exasperating ingenuity, he seemed to have taken the wind out of oursails. It is difficult to answer a man who denies the cardinal principleof American democracy, --that a good mayor or a governor may be made outof a dog-catcher. He called this the Cincinnatus theory: that anyAmerican, because he was an American, was fit for any job in the gift ofstate or city or government, from sheriff to Ambassador to Great Britain. Krebs substituted for this fallacy what may be called the doctrine ofpotentiality. If we inaugurated and developed a system of democraticeducation, based on scientific principles, and caught the dog-catcher, young enough, he might become a statesman or thinker or scientist andmake his contribution to the welfare and progress of the nation: again, he might not; but he would have had his chance, he would not be in aposition to complain. 

Here was a doctrine, I immediately perceived, which it would be suicidalto attempt to refute. It ought, indeed, to have been my line. With agrowing distaste I began to realize that all there was left for me was toflatter a populace that Krebs, paradoxically, belaboured. Never in thehistory of American "uplift" had an electorate been in this manner wooed!upbraided for expediency, a proneness to demand immediate results, anunwillingness to think, yes, and an inability to think straight. Such anelectorate deserved to be led around by the nose by the Jasons andDickinsons, the Gorses and the Griersons and the Parets. 

Yes, he had mentioned me. That gave me a queer sensation. How is one tohandle an opponent who praises one with a delightful irony? We, theDickinsons, Griersons, Parets, Jasons, etc. , had this virtue at least, and it was by no means the least of the virtues, --that we did think. Wehad a plan, a theory of government, and we carried it out. He wasinclined to believe that morality consisted largely, if not wholly, inclear thinking, and not in the precepts of the Sunday-school. That wasthe trouble with the so-called "reform" campaigns, they were conducted onlines of Sunday-school morality; the people worked themselves up into asort of revivalist frenzy, an emotional state which, if the truth weretold, was thoroughly immoral, unreasonable and hypocritical: like allfrenzies, as a matter of course it died down after the campaign was over. Moreover, the American people had shown that they were unwilling to makeany sacrifices for the permanent betterment of conditions, and as soon astheir incomes began to fall off they turned again to the bosses andcapitalists like an abject flock of sheep. 

He went on to explain that he wasn't referring now to that part of theelectorate known as the labour element, the men who worked with theirhands in mills, factories, etc. They had their faults, yet they possessedat least the virtue of solidarity, a willingness to undergo sacrifices inorder to advance the standard of conditions; they too had a tenacity ofpurpose and a plan, such as it was, which the small business men, theclerks lacked. .. . 

We must wake up to the fact that we shouldn't get Utopia by turning outMr. Jason and the highly efficient gentlemen who hired and financed him. It wasn't so simple as that. Utopia was not an achievement after all, butan undertaking, a state of mind, the continued overcoming of resistanceby a progressive education and effort. And all this talk of political andfinancial "wickedness" was rubbish; the wickedness they complained of didnot reside merely in individuals it was a social disorder, or rather anorder that no longer suited social conditions. If the so-called goodcitizens would take the trouble to educate themselves, to think insteadof allowing their thinking to be done for them they would see that the"evils" which had been published broadcast were merely the symptoms ofthat disease which had come upon the social body through their collectiveneglect and indifference. They held up their hands in horror at thespectacle of a commercial, licensed prostitution, they shunned theprostitute and the criminal; but there was none of us, if honest, whowould not exclaim when he saw them, "there, but for the Grace of God, goI!" What we still called "sin" was largely the result of lack ofopportunity, and the active principle of society as at present organizedtended more and more to restrict opportunity. Lack of opportunity, lackof proper nutrition, --these made sinners by the wholesale; made, too, nine-tenths of the inefficient of whom we self-righteously complained. Wehad a national philosophy that measured prosperity in dollars and cents, included in this measurement the profits of liquor dealers who wereresponsible for most of our idiots. So long as we set our hearts on thatkind of prosperity, so long as we failed to grasp the simple andpractical fact that the greatest assets of a nation are healthy and saneand educated, clear-thinking human beings, just so long was prostitutionlogical, Riverside Franchises, traction deals, Judd Jasons, and therespectable gentlemen who continued to fill their coffers out of thepublic purse inevitable. 

The speaker turned his attention to the "respectable gentlemen" with thefull coffers, amongst whom I was by implication included. We had simplysucceeded under the rules to which society tacitly agreed. That was oursin. He ventured to say that there were few men in the hall who at thebottom of their hearts did not envy and even honour our success. He, forone, did not deem these "respectable gentlemen" utterly reprehensible; hewas sufficiently emancipated to be sorry for us. He suspected that wewere not wholly happy in being winners in such a game, --he even believedthat we could wish as much as any others to change the game and theprizes. What we represented was valuable energy misdirected andmisplaced, and in a reorganized community he would not abolish us, buttransform us: transform, at least, the individuals of our type, who werethe builders gone wrong under the influence of an outworn philosophy. Wemight be made to serve the city and the state with the same effectivenessthat we had served ourselves. 

If the best among the scientists, among the university professors andphysicians were willing to labour--and they were--for the advancement ofhumanity, for the very love of the work and service withoutdisproportionate emoluments, without the accumulation of a wealthdifficult to spend, why surely these big business men had been moulded ininfancy from no different clay! All were Americans. Instance afterinstance might be cited of business men and lawyers of ability makingsacrifices, giving up their personal affairs in order to take places ofhonour in the government in which the salary was comparatively small, proving that even these were open to inducements other than merelymercenary ones. 

It was unfortunate, he went on, but true, that the vast majority ofpeople of voting age in the United States to-day who thought they hadbeen educated were under the obligation to reeducate themselves. Hesuggested, whimsically, a vacation school for Congress and alllegislative bodies as a starter. Until the fact of the utter inadequacyof the old education were faced, there was little or no hope of solvingthe problems that harassed us. One thing was certain--that they couldn'tbe solved by a rule-of-thumb morality. Coincident with the appearance ofthese new and mighty problems, perhaps in response to them, a new andsaner view of life itself was being developed by the world's thinkers, new sciences were being evolved, correlated sciences; a psychology makinga truer analysis of human motives, impulses, of human possibilities; aneconomics and a theory of government that took account of thispsychology, and of the vast changes applied science had made inproduction and distribution. We lived in a new world, which we sought toignore; and the new education, the new viewpoint was in truth nothing butreligion made practical. It had never been thought practical before. Themotive that compelled men to work for humanity in science, in medicine, in art--yes, and in business, if we took the right view of it, was thereligious motive. The application of religion was to-day extending fromthe individual to society. No religion that did not fill the needs ofboth was a true religion. 

This meant the development of a new culture, one to be founded on theAmerican tradition of equality of opportunity. But culture was not a weedthat grew overnight; it was a leaven that spread slowly and painfully, first inoculating a few who suffered and often died for it, that it mightgradually affect the many. The spread of culture implied the recognitionof leadership: democratic leadership, but still leadership. Leadership, and the wisdom it implied, did not reside in the people, but in theleaders who sprang from the people and interpreted their needs andlongings. .. . He went on to discuss a part of the programme of theCitizens Union. .. . 

What struck me, as I laid down the typewritten sheets, was theextraordinary resemblance between the philosophies of Hermann Krebs andTheodore Watling. Only--Krebs's philosophy was the bigger, held thegreater vision of the two; I had reluctantly and rather bitterly to admitit. The appeal of it had even reached and stirred me, whose task was torefute it! Here indeed was something to fight for--perhaps to die for, ashe had said: and as I sat there in my office gazing out of the window Ifound myself repeating certain phrases he had used--the phrase aboutleadership, for instance. It was a tremendous conception of Democracy, that of acquiescence to developed leadership made responsible; aconception I was compelled to confess transcended Mr. Watling's, loyal asI was to him. .. . I began to reflect how novel all this was in a politicalspeech--although what I have quoted was in the nature of a preamble. Itwas a sermon, an educational sermon. Well, that is what sermons alwayshad been, --and even now pretended to be, --educational and stirring, appealing to the emotions through the intellect. It didn't read like theSocialism he used to preach, it had the ring of religion. He had calledit religion. 

With an effort of the will I turned from this ironical and dangerousvision of a Hugh Paret who might have been enlisted in an inspiringstruggle, of a modern yet unregenerate Saul kicking against the pricks, condemned to go forth breathing fire against a doctrine that made a trueappeal; against the man I believed I hated just because he had made thisappeal. In the act of summoning my counter-arguments I was interrupted bythe entrance of Grierson. He was calling on a matter of business, butbegan to talk about the extracts from Krebs's speech he had read in theMail and State. 

"What in hell is this fellow driving at, Paret?" he demanded. "It soundsto me like the ranting of a lunatic dervish. If he thinks so much of us, and the way we run the town, what's he squawking about?"

I looked at Grierson, and conceived an intense aversion for him. Iwondered how I had ever been able to stand him, to work with him. I sawhim in a sudden flash as a cunning, cruel bird of prey, a gorged, drabvulture with beady eyes, a resemblance so extraordinary that I wondered Ihad never remarked it before. For he had the hooked vulture nose, whilethe pink baldness of his head was relieved by a few scanty tufts of hair. 

"The people seem to like what he's got to say, " I observed. 

"It beats me, " said Grierson. "They don't understand a quarter ofit--I've been talking to some of 'em. It's their d--d curiosity, I guess. You know how they'll stand for hours around a street fakir. "

"It's more than that, " I retorted. 

Grierson regarded me piercingly. 

"Well, we'll put a crimp in him, all right, " he said, with a laugh. 

I was in an unenviable state of mind when he left me. I had an impulse tosend for Miss McCoy and ask her if she had understood what Krebs was"driving at, " but for reasons that must be fairly obvious I refrained. Iread over again that part of Krebs's speech which dealt with theimmediate programme of the Citizens Union. After paying a tribute toGreenhalge as a man of common sense and dependability who would make agood mayor, he went on to explain the principle of the new charter theyhoped ultimately to get, which should put the management of the city inthe hands of one man, an expert employed by a commission; an expert whoseduty it would be to conduct the affairs of the city on a business basis, precisely as those of any efficient corporation were conducted. This planhad already been adopted, with encouraging results, in several smallercities of the country. He explained in some detail, with statistics, thewaste and inefficiency and dishonesty in various departments under thepresent system, dwelling particularly upon the deplorable state ofaffairs in the city hospital. 

I need not dwell upon this portion of his remarks. Since then text-booksand serious periodicals have dealt with these matters thoroughly. Theyare now familiar to all thinking Americans. 

XXV. 

My entrance into the campaign was accompanied by a blare of publicity, and during that fortnight I never picked up a morning or eveningnewspaper without reading, on the first page, some such headline as"Crowds flock to hear Paret. " As a matter of fact, the crowds did flock;but I never quite knew as I looked down from platforms on seas of faceshow much of the flocking was spontaneous. Much of it was so, since thestruggle had then become sufficiently dramatic to appeal to the largerpublic imagination that is but occasionally waked; on the other hand, themagic of advertising cannot be underestimated; nor must the existence beignored of an organized corps of shepherds under the vigilant directionof Mr. Judd Jason, whose duty it was to see that none of our meetings waslacking in numbers and enthusiasm. There was always a demonstrativegathering overflowing the sidewalk in front of the entrance, swaying andcheering in the light of the street lamps, and on the floor within anample scattering of suspiciously bleary-eyed voters to start the stampingand applauding. In spite of these known facts, the impression ofpopularity, of repudiation of reform by a large majority of level-headedinhabitants had reassuring and reenforcing effects. 

Astute citizens, spectators of the fray--if indeed there were any--mighthave remarked an unique and significant feature of that campaign: thatthe usual recriminations between the two great parties were lacking. Mr. Parks, the Republican candidate, did not denounce Mr. MacGuire, theDemocratic candidate. Republican and Democratic speakers alike expendedtheir breath in lashing Mr. Krebs and the Citizens Union. 

It is difficult to record the fluctuations of my spirit. When I was inthe halls, speaking or waiting to speak, I reacted to that phenomenonknown as mob psychology, I became self-confident, even exhilarated; andin those earlier speeches I managed, I think, to strike the note forwhich I strove--the judicial note, suitable to a lawyer of weight andprominence, of deprecation rather than denunciation. I sought to embodyand voice a fine and calm sanity at a time when everyone else seemed indanger of losing their heads, and to a large extent achieved it. I hadknown Mr. Krebs for more than twenty years, and while I did not care tocriticise a fellow-member of the bar, I would go so far as to say that hewas visionary, that the changes he proposed in government would, ifadopted, have grave and far-reaching results: we could not, for instance, support in idleness those who refused to do their share of the work ofthe world. Mr. Krebs was well-meaning. I refrained from dwelling too longupon him, passing to Mr. Greenhalge, also well-meaning, but a man ofmediocre ability who would make a mess of the government of a city whichwould one day rival New York and Chicago. (Loud cheers. ) And I pointedout that Mr. Perry Blackwood had been unable to manage the affairs of theBoyne Street road. Such men, well-intentioned though they might be, werehindrances to progress. This led me naturally to a discussion of theRiverside Franchise and the Traction Consolidation. I was one of thosewhose honesty and good faith had been arraigned, but I would not stoop torefute the accusations. I dwelt upon the benefits to the city, uniformservice, electricity and large comfortable cars instead of rattletrapconveyances, and the development of a large and growing population in theRiverside neighbourhood: the continual extension of lines to suburbandistricts that enabled hard-worked men to live out of the smoke: I calledattention to the system of transfers, the distance a passenger might beconveyed, and conveyed quickly, for the sum of five cents. I spoke of ourcapitalists as men more sinned against than sinning. Their money wasalways at the service of enterprises tending to the development of ourmetropolis. 

When I was not in the meetings, however, and especially when in my roomat night, I was continually trying to fight off a sense of lonelinessthat seemed to threaten to overwhelm me. I wanted to be alone, and yet Ifeared to be. I was aware, in spite of their congratulations on myefforts, of a growing dislike for my associates; and in the appallingemptiness of the moments when my depression was greatest I was forced tothe realization that I had no disinterested friend--not one--in whom Icould confide. Nancy had failed me; I had scarcely seen Tom Peters thatwinter, and it was out of the question to go to him. For the third timein my life, and in the greatest crisis of all, I was feeling the need ofSomething, of some sustaining and impelling Power that must be presentedhumanly, possessing sympathy and understanding and love. .. . I think I hada glimpse just a pathetic glimpse--of what the Church might be of humansolidarity, comfort and support, of human tolerance, if stripped of thesuperstition of an ancient science. My tortures weren't of the flesh, butof the mind. My mind was the sheep which had gone astray. Was there nosuch thing, could there be no such thing as a human association thatmight at the same time be a divine organism, a fold and a refuge for thelost and divided minds? The source of all this trouble was social. .. . 

Then toward the end of that last campaign week, madness suddenly cameupon me. I know now how near the breaking point I was, but the immediatecause of my "flying to pieces"--to use a vivid expression--was a speechmade by Guptill, one of the Citizens Union candidates for alderman, ayoung man of a radical type not uncommon in these days, though new to myexperience: an educated man in the ultra-radical sense, yet lacking poiseand perspective, with a certain brilliance and assurance. He was ajournalist, a correspondent of some Eastern newspapers and periodicals. In this speech, which was reported to me--for it did not get into thenewspapers--I was the particular object of his attack. Men of my kind, and not the Judd Jasons (for whom there was some excuse) were the leastdispensable tools of the capitalists, the greatest menace tocivilization. We were absolutely lacking in principle, we were ready atany time to besmirch our profession by legalizing steals; we fouled ournests with dirty fees. Not all that he said was vituperation, for he knewsomething of the modern theory of the law that legal radicals had begunto proclaim, and even to teach in some tolerant universities. 

The next night, in the middle of a prepared speech I was delivering to alarge crowd in Kingdom Hall there had been jeers from a group in a cornerat some assertion I made. Guptill's accusations had been festering in mymind. The faces of the people grew blurred as I felt anger boiling, rising within me; suddenly my control gave way, and I launched forth intoa denunciation of Greenhalge, Krebs, Guptill and even of Perry Blackwoodthat must have been without license or bounds. I can recall onlyfragments of my remarks: Greenhalge wanted to be mayor, and was willingto put the stigma of slander on his native city in order to gain hisambition; Krebs had made a failure of his profession, of everything savein bringing shame on the place of his adoption; and on the singleoccasion heretofore when he had been before the public, in the SchoolBoard fiasco, the officials indicted on his supposed evidence hadtriumphantly been vindicated--, Guptill was gaining money and notorietyout of his spleen; Perry Blackwood was acting out of spite. .. . I returnedto Krebs, declaring that he would be the boss of the city if that ticketwere elected, demanding whether they wished for a boss an agitatoritching for power and recognition. .. . 

I was conscious at the moment only of a wild relief and joy in lettingmyself go, feelings heightened by the clapping and cheers with which mycharacterizations were received. The fact that the cheers were mingledwith hisses merely served to drive me on. At length, when I had returnedto Krebs, the hisses were redoubled, angering me the more because of theevidence they gave of friends of his in my audiences. Perhaps I had madesome of these friends for him! A voice shouted out above the uproar:--"Iknow about Krebs. He's a d--d sight better man than you. " And thisstarted a struggle in a corner of the hall. .. . I managed, somehow, whenthe commotion had subsided, to regain my poise, and ended by uttering theconviction that the common sense of the community would repudiate theCitizens Union and all it stood for. .. . 

But that night, as I lay awake listening to the street noises and staringat the glint from a street lamp on the brass knob of my bedstead, I knewthat I had failed. I had committed the supreme violation of the self thatleads inevitably to its final dissolution. .. . Even the exuberantheadlines of the newspapers handed me by the club servant in the morningbrought but little relief. 

On the Saturday morning before the Tuesday of election there was aconference in the directors' room of the Corn National. The city reekedwith smoke and acrid, stale gas, the electric lights were turned on todispel the November gloom. It was not a cheerful conference, nor aconfident one. For the first time in a collective experience the mengathered there were confronted with a situation which they doubted theirability to control, a situation for which there was no precedent. Theyhad to reckon with a new and unsolvable equation in politics andfinance, --the independent voter. There was an element of desperation inthe discussion. Recriminations passed. Dickinson implied that Gorse withall his knowledge of political affairs ought to have foreseen thatsomething like this was sure to happen, should have managed better theconventions of both great parties. The railroad counsel retorted that ithad been as much Dickinson's fault as his. Grierson expressed a regretthat I had broken out against the reformers; it had reacted, hesaid, --and this was just enough to sting me to retaliate that things hadbeen done in the campaign, chiefly through his initiative, that were notonly unwise, but might land some of us in the penitentiary if Krebs wereelected. 

"Well, " Grierson exclaimed, "whether he's elected or not, I wouldn't givemuch now for your chances of getting to the Senate. We can't afford tofly in the face of the dear public. "

A tense silence followed this remark. In the street below the rumble ofthe traffic came to us muffled by the heavy plate-glass windows. I sawTallant glance at Gorse and Dickinson, and I knew the matter had beendecided between themselves, that they had been merely withholding it fromme until after election. I was besmirched, for the present at least. 

"I think you will do me the justice, gentlemen, " I remember sayingslowly, with the excessive and rather ridiculous formality of a man whois near the end of his tether, "that the idea of representing you in theSenate was yours, not mine. You begged me to take the appointment againstmy wishes and my judgment. I had no desire to go to Washington then, Ihave less to-day. I have come to the conclusion that my usefulness to youis at an end. "

I got to my feet. I beheld Miller Gorse sitting impassive, with hisencompassing stare, the strongest man of them all. A change of firmamentswould not move him. But Dickinson had risen and put his hand on myshoulder. It was the first time I had ever seen him white. 

"Hold on, Hugh, " he exclaimed, "I guess we're all a little cantankeroustoday. This confounded campaign has got on our nerves, and we say thingswe don't mean. You mustn't think we're not grateful for the servicesyou've rendered us. We're all in the same boat, and there isn't a manwho's been on our side of this fight who could take a political office atthis time. We've got to face that fact, and I know you have the sense tosee it, too. I, for one, won't be satisfied until I see you in theSenate. It's where you belong, and you deserve to be there. Youunderstand what the public is, how it blows hot and cold, and in a fewyears they'll be howling to get us back, if these demagogues win. 

"Sure, " chimed in Grierson, who was frightened, "that's right, Hugh. Ididn't mean anything. Nobody appreciates you more than I do, old man. "

Tallant, too, added something, and Berringer, --I've forgotten what. I wastired, too tired to meet their advances halfway. I said that I had aspeech to get ready for that night, and other affairs to attend to, andleft them grouped together like crestfallen conspirators--all save MillerGorse, whose pervasive gaze seemed to follow me after I had closed thedoor. 

An elevator took me down to the lobby of the Corn Bank Building. I pausedfor a moment, aimlessly regarding the streams of humanity hurrying in andout, streaking the white marble floor with the wet filth of the streets. Someone spoke my name. It was Bitter, Judd Jason's "legal" tool, and Ipermitted myself to be dragged out of the eddies into a quiet corner bythe cigar stand. 

"Say, I guess we've got Krebs's goat all right, this time, " he told meconfidentially, in a voice a little above a whisper; "he was busy withthe shirt-waist girls last year, you remember, when they were striking. Well, one of 'em, one of the strike leaders, has taken to easy street;she's agreed to send him a letter to-night to come 'round to her roomafter his meeting, to say that she's sick and wants to see him. He'll go, all right. We'll have some fun, we'll be ready for him. Do you get me? Solong. The old man's waiting for me. "

It may seem odd that this piece of information did not produce animmediately revolting effect. I knew that similar practices had beentried on Krebs, but this was the first time I had heard of a definiteplan, and from a man like Bitter. As I made my way out of the building Ihad, indeed, a nauseated feeling; Jason's "lawyer" was a dirty littleman, smelling of stale cigars, with a blue-black, unshaven face. In spiteof the shocking nature of his confidence, he had actually not succeededin deflecting the current of my thoughts; these were still running overthe scene in the directors' room. I had listened to him passively whilehe had held my buttonhole, and he had detained me but an instant. 

When I reached the street I was wondering whether Gorse and Dickinson andthe others, Grierson especially, could possibly have entertained thebelief that I would turn traitor? I told myself that I had no intentionof this. How could I turn traitor? and what would be the object? revenge?The nauseated feeling grew more acute. .. . Reaching my office, I shut thedoor, sat down at my desk, summoned my will, and began to jot down randomnotes for the part of my speech I was to give the newspapers, notes thatwere mere silly fragments of arguments I had once thought effective. Icould no more concentrate on them than I could have written a poem. Gradually, like the smoke that settled down on our city until we lived indarkness at midday, the horror of what Bitter had told me began topervade my mind, until I was in a state of terror. 

Had I, Hugh Paret, fallen to this, that I could stand by consenting to anact which was worse than assassination? Was any cause worth it? Could anycause survive it? But my attempts at reasoning might be likened to thestrainings of a wayfarer lost on a mountain side to pick his way in thegathering dusk. I had just that desperate feeling of being lost, and withit went an acute sense of an imminent danger; the ground, no longer firmunder my feet, had become a sliding shale sloping toward an unseenprecipice. Perhaps, like the wayfarer, my fears were the sharper for thememory of the beauty of the morning on that same mountain, when, filledwith vigour, I had gazed on it from the plain below and beheld the sunbreaking through the mists. .. . 

The necessity of taking some action to avert what I now realized as aninfamy pressed upon me, yet in conflict with the pressure of thisnecessity there persisted that old rebellion, that bitterness which hadbeen growing all these years against the man who, above all others, seemed to me to represent the forces setting at nought my achievements, bringing me to this pass. .. . 

I thought of appealing to Leonard Dickinson, who surely, if he knew ofit, would not permit this thing to be done; and he was the only man withthe possible exception of Miller Gorse who might be able to restrain JuddJason. But I delayed until after the luncheon hour, when I called up thebank on the telephone, to discover that it was closed. I had forgottenthat the day was Saturday. I was prepared to say that I would withdrawfrom the campaign, warn Krebs myself if this kind of tactics were notsuppressed. But I could not get the banker. Then I began to have doubtsof Dickinson's power in the matter. Judd Jason had never been tractable, by any means; he had always maintained a considerable independence of thefinancial powers, and to-day not only financial control, but thedominance of Jason himself was at stake. He would fight for it to thelast ditch, and make use of any means. No, it was of no use to appeal tohim. What then? Well, there was a reaction, or an attempt at one. Krebshad not been born yesterday, he had avoided the wiles of the politiciansheretofore, he wouldn't be fool enough to be taken in now. I told myselfthat if I were not in a state bordering on a nervous breakdown, I shouldlaugh at such morbid fears, I steadied myself sufficiently to dictate theextract from my speech that was to be published. I was to make addressesat two halls, alternating with Parks, the mayoralty candidate. At fouro'clock I went back to my room in the Club to try to get some rest. .. . 

Seddon's Hall, the place of my first meeting, was jammed that Saturdaynight. I went through my speech automatically, as in a dream, the habitof long years asserting itself. And yet--so I was told afterwards--mydelivery was not mechanical, and I actually achieved more emphasis, gavea greater impression of conviction than at any time since the night I hadlost my control and violently denounced the reformers. By someastonishing subconscious process I had regained my manner, but theapplause came to me as from a distance. Not only was my mind not there;it did not seem to be anywhere. I was dazed, nor did I feel--save once--afleeting surge of contempt for the mob below me with their silly facesupturned to mine. There may have been intelligent expressions among them, but they failed to catch my eye. 

I remember being stopped by Grierson as I was going out of the sideentrance. He took my hand and squeezed it, and there was on his face anodd, surprised look. 

"That was the best yet, Hugh, " he said. 

I went on past him. Looking back on that evening now, it would almostseem as though the volition of another possessed me, not my own:seemingly, I had every intention of going on to the National Theatre, inwhich Parks had just spoken, and as I descended the narrow stairway andemerged on the side street I caught sight of my chauffeur awaiting me bythe curb. 

"I'm not going to that other meeting, " I found myself saying. "I'm prettytired. "

"Shall I drive you back to the Club, sir?" he inquired. 

"No--I'll walk back. Wait a moment. " I entered the ear, turned on thelight and scribbled a hasty note to Andrews, the chairman of the meetingat the National, telling him that I was too tired to speak again thatnight, and to ask one of the younger men there to take my place. Then Igot out of the car and gave the note to the chauffeur. 

"You're all right, sir?" he asked, with a note of anxiety in his voice. He had been with me a long time. 

I reassured him. He started the car, and I watched it absently as itgathered speed and turned the corner. I began to walk, slowly at first, then more and more rapidly until I had gained a breathless pace; in tenminutes I was in West Street, standing in front of the Templar's Hallwhere the meeting of the Citizens Union west in progress. Now that I hadarrived there, doubt and uncertainty assailed me. I had come as it werein spite of myself, thrust onward by an impulse I did not understand, which did not seem to be mine. What was I going to do? The proceedingsuddenly appeared to me as ridiculous, tinged with the weirdness ofsomnambulism. I revolted, walked away, got as far as the corner and stoodbeside a lamp post, pretending to be waiting for a car. The street lightswere reflected in perpendicular, wavy-yellow ribbons on the wet asphalt, and I stood staring with foolish intentness at this phenomenon, wonderinghow a painter would get the effect in oils. Again I was walking backtowards the hall, combating the acknowledgment to myself that I had aplan, a plan that I did not for a moment believe I would carry out. I wasshivering. 

I climbed the steps. The wide vestibule was empty except for two men whostopped a low-toned conversation to look at me. I wondered whether theyrecognized me; that I might be recognized was an alarming possibilitywhich had not occurred to me. 

"Who is speaking?" I asked. 

"Mr. Krebs, " answered the taller man of the two. 

The hum of applause came from behind the swinging doors. I pushed themopen cautiously, passing suddenly out of the cold into the reeking, heated atmosphere of a building packed with human beings. The spacebehind the rear seats was filled with men standing, and those nearestglanced around with annoyance at the interruption of my entrance. I mademy way along the wall, finally reaching a side aisle, whence I could getsight of the platform and the speaker. 

I heard his words distinctly, but at first lacked the faculty ofstringing them together, or rather of extracting their collective sense. The phrases indeed were set ringing through my mind, I found myselfrepeating them without any reference to their meaning; I had reached thepeculiar pitch of excitement that counterfeits abnormal calm, and allsense of strangeness at being there in that meeting had passed away. Ibegan to wonder how I might warn Krebs, and presently decided to send hima note when he should have finished speaking--but I couldn't make up mymind whether to put my name to the note or not. Of course I needn't haveentered the hall at all: I might have sent in my note at the side door. 

I must have wished to see Krebs, to hear him speak; to observe, perhaps, the effect on the audience. In spite of my inability to take in what hewas saying, I was able to regard him objectively, --objectively, in arestricted sense. I noticed that he had grown even thinner; the flesh hadfallen away from under his cheek-bones, and there were sharp, deep, almost perpendicular lines on either side of his mouth. He was emaciated, that was the word. Once in a while he thrust his hand through his dry, ashy hair which was of a tone with the paleness of his face. Such was hisonly gesture. 

He spoke quietly, leaning with one elbow against the side of his readingstand. The occasional pulsations of applause were almost immediatelyhushed, as though the people feared to lose even a word that should fallfrom his dry lips. What was it he was talking about? I tried toconcentrate my attention, with only partial success. He was explainingthe new theory of city government that did not attempt to evade, butdealt frankly with the human needs of to-day, and sought to meet thoseneeds in a positive way. .. What had happened to me, though I did notrealize it, was that I had gradually come under the influence of a tragicspell not attributable to the words I heard, existing independently ofthem, pervading the spacious hall, weaving into unity dissentient minds. And then, with what seemed a retarded rather than sudden awareness, Iknew that he had stopped speaking. Once more he ran his hand through hishair, he was seemingly groping for words that would not come. I waspierced by a strange agony--the amazing source of which, seemed to be asmile on the face of Hermann Krebs, an ineffable smile illuminating theplace like a flash of light, in which suffering and tragedy, comradeshipand loving kindness--all were mingled. He stood for a moment with thatsmile on his face--swayed, and would have fallen had it not been for thequickness of a man on the platform behind him, and into whose arms hesank. 

In an instant people had risen in their seats, men were hurrying down theaisles, while a peculiar human murmur or wail persisted like an undertonebeneath the confusion of noises, striking the very note of my ownfeelings. Above the heads of those about me I saw Krebs being carried offthe platform. .. . The chairman motioned for silence and inquired if therewere a physician in the audience, and then all began to talk at once. Theman who stood beside me clutched my arm. 

"I hope he isn't dead! Say, did you see that smile? My God, I'll neverforget it!"

The exclamation poignantly voiced the esteem in which Krebs was held. AsI was thrust along out of the hall by the ebb of the crowd still otherexpressions of this esteem came to me in fragments, expressions of sorrowand dismay, of a loyalty I had not imagined. Mingled with these wereoccasional remarks of skeptics shaken, in human fashion, by thesuggestion of the inevitable end that never fails to sober and terrifyhumanity. 

"I guess he was a bigger man than we thought. There was a lot of sense inwhat he had to say. "

"There sure was, " the companion of this speaker answered. 

They spoke of him in the past tense. I was seized and obsessed by thefear that I should never see him again, and at the same moment I realizedsharply that this was the one thing I wanted--to see him. I pushedthrough the people, gained the street, and fairly ran down the alley thatled to the side entrance of the hall, where a small group was gatheredunder the light that hung above the doorway. There stood on the step, alittle above the others, a young man in a grey flannel shirt, evidently amechanic. I addressed him. 

"What does the doctor say?"

Before replying he surveyed me with surprise and, I think, withinstinctive suspicion of my clothes and bearing. 

"What can he say?" he retorted. 

"You mean--?" I began. 

"I mean Mr. Krebs oughtn't never to have gone into this campaign, " heanswered, relenting a trifle, perhaps at the tone of my voice. "He knewit, too, and some of us fellows tried to stop him. But we couldn't donothing with him, " he added dejectedly. 

"What is--the trouble?" I asked. 

"They tell me it's his heart. He wouldn't talk about it. "

"When I think of what he done for our union!" exclaimed a thick-set man, plainly a steel worker. "He's just wore himself out, fighting thatcrooked gang. " He stared with sudden aggressiveness at me. "Haven't Iseen you some-wheres?" he demanded. 

A denial was on my lips when the sharp, sinister strokes of a bell wereheard coming nearer. 

"It's the ambulance, " said the man on the step. 

Glancing up the alley beyond the figures of two policemen who had arrivedand were holding the people back, I saw the hood of the conveyance as itcame to a halt, and immediately a hospital doctor and two assistantscarrying a stretcher hurried towards us, and we made way for them toenter. After a brief interval, they were heard coming slowly down thesteps inside. By the white, cruel light of the arc I saw Krebs lyingmotionless. .. . I laid hold of one of the men who had been on theplatform. He did not resent the act, he seemed to anticipate my question. 

"He's conscious. The doctors expect him to rally when he gets to thehospital. "

I walked back to the Club to discover that several inquiries had beenmade about me. Reporters had been there, Republican Headquarters hadtelephoned to know if I were ill. Leaving word that I was not to bedisturbed under any circumstances, I went to my room, and spent most ofthe night in distracted thought. When at last morning came I breakfastedearly, searching the newspapers for accounts of the occurrence atTemplar's Hall; and the fact that these were neither conspicuous norcircumstantial was in the nature of a triumph of self-control on the partof editors and reporters. News, however sensational, had severely to becondensed in the interest of a cause, and at this critical stage of thecampaign to make a tragic hero of Hermann Krebs would have been theheight of folly. There were a couple of paragraphs giving the gist of hisspeech, and a statement at the end that he had been taken ill andconveyed to the Presbyterian Hospital. .. . 

The hospital itself loomed up before me that Sunday morning as Iapproached it along Ballantyne Street, a diluted sunshine washing theextended, businesslike facade of grimy, yellow brick. We were proud ofthat hospital in the city, and many of our foremost citizens hadcontributed large sums of money to the building, scarcely ten years old. It had been one of Maude's interests. I was ushered into the receptionroom, where presently came the physician in charge, a Dr. Castle, one ofthose quiet-mannered, modern young medical men who bear on their personsthe very stamp of efficiency, of the dignity of a scientific profession. His greeting implied that he knew all about me, his presence seemed toincrease the agitation I tried not to betray, and must have betrayed. 

"Can I do anything for you, Mr. Paret?" he asked. 

"I have come to inquire about Mr. Krebs, who was brought here last night, I believe. "

I was aware for an instant of his penetrating, professional glance, theonly indication of the surprise he must have felt that Hermann Krebs, ofall men, should be the object of my solicitude. 

"Why, we sent him home this morning. Nineteen twenty six Fowler Street. He wanted to go, and there was no use in his staying. "

"He will recover?" I asked. 

The physician shook his head, gazing at me through his glasses. 

"He may live a month, Mr. Paret, he may die to-morrow. He ought never tohave gone into this campaign, he knew he had this trouble. Hepburn warnedhim three months ago, and there's no man who knows more about the heartthan Hepburn. "

"Then there's no hope?" I asked. 

"Absolutely none. It's a great pity. " He added, after a moment, "Mr. Krebs was a remarkable man. "

"Nineteen twenty-six Fowler Street?" I repeated. 

"Yes. "

I held out my hand mechanically, and he pressed it, and went with me tothe door. 

"Nineteen twenty-six Fowler Street, " he repeated. .. 

The mean and sordid aspect of Fowler Street emphasized and seemed totypify my despair, the pungent coal smoke stifled my lungs even as itstifled my spirit. Ugly factories, which were little more thansweatshops, wore an empty, menacing, "Sunday" look, and the faintNovember sunlight glistened on dirty pavements where children were makinga semblance of play. Monotonous rows of red houses succeeded one another, some pushed forward, others thrust back behind little plots of stampedearth. Into one of these I turned. It seemed a little cleaner, betterkept, less sordid than the others. I pulled the bell, and presently thedoor was opened by a woman whose arms were bare to the elbow. She wore ablue-checked calico apron that came to her throat, but the apron wasclean, and her firm though furrowed face gave evidences of recenthousewifely exertions. Her eyes had the strange look of the cheerfulnessthat is intimately acquainted with sorrow. She did not seem surprised atseeing me. 

"I have come to ask about Mr. Krebs, " I told her. 

"Oh, yes, " she said, "there's been so many here this morning already. It's wonderful how people love him, all kinds of people. No, sir, hedon't seem to be in any pain. Two gentlemen are up there now in his room, I mean. "

She wiped her arms, which still bore traces of soap-suds, and then, witha gesture natural and unashamed, lifted the corner of her apron to hereyes. 

"Do you think I could see him--for a moment?" I asked. "I've known himfor a long time. "

"Why, I don't know, " she said, "I guess so. The doctor said he could seesome, and he wants to see his friends. That's not strange--he always did. I'll ask. Will you tell me your name?"

I took out a card. She held it without glancing at it, and invited me in. 

I waited, unnerved and feverish, pulsing, in the dark and narrow hallbeside the flimsy rack where several coats and hats were hung. Oncebefore I had visited Krebs in that lodging-house in Cambridge long agowith something of the same feelings. But now they were greatlyintensified. Now he was dying. .. . 

The woman was descending. 

"He says he wants to see you, sir, " she said rather breathlessly, and Ifollowed her. In the semi-darkness of the stairs I passed the three menwho had been with Krebs, and when I reached the open door of his room hewas alone. I hesitated just a second, swept by the heat wave that followssudden shyness, embarrassment, a sense of folly it is too late to avert. 

Krebs was propped up with pillows. 

"Well, this is good of you, " he said, and reached out his hand across thespread. I took it, and sat down beside the shiny oak bedstead, in a chaircovered with tobacco-colored plush. 

"You feel better?" I asked. 

"Oh, I feel all right, " he answered, with a smile. "It's queer, but Ido. "

My eye fell upon the long line of sectional book-cases that lined oneside of the room. "Why, you've got quite a library here, " I observed. 

"Yes, I've managed to get together some good books. But there is so muchto read nowadays, so much that is really good and new, a man has thehopeless feeling he can never catch up with it all. A thousand writersand students are making contributions today where fifty years ago therewas one. "

"I've been following your speeches, after a fashion, --I wish I might havebeen able to read more of them. Your argument interested me. It's new, unlike the ordinary propaganda of--"

"Of agitators, " he supplied, with a smile. 

"Of agitators, " I agreed, and tried to return his smile. "An agitator whoappears to suggest the foundations of a constructive programme and whoisn't afraid to criticise the man with a vote as well as the capitalistis an unusual phenomenon. "

"Oh, when we realize that we've only got a little time left in which totell what we think to be the truth, it doesn't require a great deal ofcourage, Paret. I didn't begin to see this thing until a little whileago. I was only a crude, hot-headed revolutionist. God knows I'm crudeenough still. But I began to have a glimmering of what all these newfellows in the universities are driving at. " He waved his hand towardsthe book-cases. "Driving at collectively, I mean. And there are attempts, worthy attempts, to coordinate and synthesize the sciences. What I havebeen saying is not strictly original. I took it on the stump, that's all. I didn't expect it to have much effect in this campaign, but it was anopportunity to sow a few seeds, to start a sense of personaldissatisfaction in the minds of a few voters. What is it Browning says?It's in Bishop Blougram, I believe. 'When the fight begins withinhimself, a man's worth something. ' It's an intellectual fight, ofcourse. "

His words were spoken quietly, but I realized suddenly that themysterious force which had drawn me to him now, against my will, was anintellectual rather than apparently sentimental one, an intellectualforce seeming to comprise within it all other human attractions. And yetI felt a sudden contrition. 

"See here, Krebs, " I said, "I didn't come here to bother you about thesematters, to tire you. I mustn't stay. I'll call in again to see how youare--from time to time. "

"But you're not tiring me, " he protested, stretching forth a thin, detaining hand. "I don't want to rot, I want to live and think as long asI can. To tell you the truth, Paret, I've been wishing to talk toyou--I'm glad you came in. "

"You've been wishing to talk to me?" I said. 

"Yes, but I didn't expect you'd come in. I hope you won't mind my sayingso, under the circumstances, but I've always rather liked you, admiredyou, even back in the Cambridge days. After that I used to blame you forgoing out and taking what you wanted, and I had to live a good many yearsbefore I began to see that it's better for a man to take what he wantsthan to take nothing at all. I took what I wanted, every man worth hissalt does. There's your great banker friend in New York whom I used tothink was the arch-fiend. He took what he wanted, and he took a gooddeal, but it happened to be good for him. And by piling up hiscorporations, Ossa on Pelion, he is paving the way for a logical economicevolution. How can a man in our time find out what he does want unless hetakes something and gives it a trial?"

"Until he begins to feel that it disagrees with him, " I said. "But then, "I added involuntarily, "then it may be too late to try something else, and he may not know what to try. " This remark of mine might havesurprised me had it not been for the feeling--now grown definite--thatKrebs had something to give me, something to pass on to me, of all men. Indeed, he had hinted as much, when he acknowledged a wish to talk to me. "What seems so strange, " I said, as I looked at him lying back on hispillows, "is your faith that we shall be able to bring order out of allthis chaos--your belief in Democracy. "

"Democracy's an adventure, " he replied, "the great adventure of mankind. I think the trouble in many minds lies in the fact that they persist inregarding it as something to be made safe. All that can be done is to tryto make it as safe as possible. But no adventure is safe--life itself isan adventure, and neither is that safe. It's a hazard, as you and I havefound out. The moment we try to make life safe we lose all there is in itworth while. "

I thought a moment. 

"Yes, that's so, " I agreed. On the table beside the bed in company withtwo or three other volumes, lay a Bible. He seemed to notice that my eyefell upon it. 

"Do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son?" he asked. "Well, that'sthe parable of democracy, of self-government in the individual and insociety. In order to arrive at salvation, Paret, most of us have to takeour journey into a far country. "

"A far country!" I exclaimed. The words struck a reminiscent chord. 

"We have to leave what seem the safe things, we have to wander and sufferin order to realize that the only true safety lies in development. Wehave first to cast off the leading strings of authority. It's a delusionthat we can insure ourselves by remaining within its walls--we have torisk our lives and our souls. It is discouraging when we look around usto-day, and in a way the pessimists are right when they say we don't seedemocracy. We see only what may be called the first stage of it; fordemocracy is still in a far country eating the husks of individualism, materialism. What we see is not true freedom, but freedom run to riot, men struggling for themselves, spending on themselves the fruits of theirinheritance; we see a government intent on one object alone--exploitationof this inheritance in order to achieve what it calls prosperity. And Godis far away. "

"And--we shall turn?" I asked. 

"We shall turn or perish. I believe that we shall turn. " He fixed hiseyes on my face. "What is it, " he asked, "that brought you here to me, to-day?"

I was silent. 

"The motive, Paret--the motive that sends us all wandering into isdivine, is inherited from God himself. And the same motive, after oureyes shall have been opened, after we shall have seen and known thetragedy and misery of life, after we shall have made the mistakes andcommitted the sins and experienced the emptiness--the same motive willlead us back again. That, too, is an adventure, the greatest adventure ofall. Because, when we go back we shall not find the same God--or ratherwe shall recognize him in ourselves. Autonomy is godliness, knowledge isgodliness. We went away cringing, superstitious, we saw everywhere omensand evidences of his wrath in the earth and sea and sky, we burnedcandles and sacrificed animals in the vain hope of averting scourges andother calamities. But when we come back it will be with a knowledge ofhis ways, gained at a price, --the price he, too, must have paid--and weshall be able to stand up and look him in the face, and all our childishsuperstitions and optimisms shall have been burned away. "

Some faith indeed had given him strength to renounce those things in lifeI had held dear, driven him on to fight until his exhausted body failedhim, and even now that he was physically helpless sustained him. I didnot ask myself, then, the nature of this faith. In its presence it couldno more be questioned than the light. It was light; I felt bathed in it. Now it was soft, suffused: but I remembered how the night before in thehall, just before he had fallen, it had flashed forth in a smile andillumined my soul with an ecstasy that yet was anguish. .. . 

"We shall get back, " I said at length. My remark was not a question--ithad escaped from me almost unawares. 

"The joy is in the journey, " he answered. "The secret is in the search. "

"But for me?" I exclaimed. 

"We've all been lost, Paret. It would seem as though we have to be. "

"And yet you are--saved, " I said, hesitating over the word. 

"It is true that I am content, even happy, " he asserted, "in spite of mywish to live. If there is any secret, it lies, I think, in the strugglefor an open mind, in the keeping alive of a desire to know more and more. That desire, strangely enough, hasn't lost its strength. We don't knowwhether there is a future life, but if there is, I think it must be acontinuation of this. " He paused. "I told you I was glad you camein--I've been thinking of you, and I saw you in the hall last night. Youask what there is for you--I'll tell you, --the new generation. "

"The new generation. "

"That's the task of every man and woman who wakes up. I've come to seehow little can be done for the great majority of those who have reachedour age. It's hard--but it's true. Superstition, sentiment, the habit ofwrong thinking or of not thinking at all have struck in too deep, thehabit of unreasoning acceptance of authority is too paralyzing. Some maybe stung back into life, spurred on to find out what the world really is, but not many. The hope lies in those who are coming after us--we must dofor them what wasn't done for us. We really didn't have much of a chance, Paret. What did our instructors at Harvard know about the age that wasdawning? what did anybody know? You can educate yourself--or ratherreeducate yourself. All this"--and he waved his hand towards hisbookshelves--"all this has sprung up since you and I were at Cambridge;if we don't try to become familiar with it, if we fail to grasp the pointof view from which it's written, there's little hope for us. Go away fromall this and get straightened out, make yourself acquainted with themodern trend in literature and criticism, with modern history, find outwhat's being done in the field of education, read the modern sciences, especially biology, and psychology and sociology, and try to get aglimpse of the fundamental human needs underlying such phenomena as thelabour and woman's movements. God knows I've just begun to get myglimpse, and I've floundered around ever since I left college. .. . I don'tmean to say we can ever see the whole, but we can get a clew, an idea, and pass it on to our children. You have children, haven't you?"

"Yes, " I said. .. . 

He said nothing--he seemed to be looking out of the window. 

"Then the scientific point of view in your opinion hasn't done away withreligion?" I asked presently. 

"The scientific point of view is the religious point of view, " he saidearnestly, "because it's the only self-respecting point of view. I can'tbelieve that God intended to make a creature who would not ultimatelyweigh his beliefs with his reason instead of accepting them blindly. That's immoral, if you like--especially in these days. "

"And are there, then, no 'over-beliefs'?" I said, remembering theexpression in something I had read. 

"That seems to me a relic of the method of ancient science, which wasupside down, --a mere confusion with faith. Faith and belief are twodifferent things; faith is the emotion, the steam, if you like, thatdrives us on in our search for truth. Theories, at a stretch, might beidentified with 'over-beliefs' but when it comes to confusing ourtheories with facts, instead of recognizing them as theories, when itcomes to living by 'over-beliefs' that have no basis in reason andobserved facts, --that is fatal. It's just the trouble with so much of ourelectorate to-day--unreasoning acceptance without thought. "

"Then, " I said, "you admit of no other faculty than reason?"

"I confess that I don't. A great many insights that we seem to get fromwhat we call intuition I think are due to the reason, which isunconsciously at work. If there were another faculty that equalled ortranscended reason, it seems to me it would be a very dangerous thing forthe world's progress. We'd come to rely on it rather than on ourselvesthe trouble with the world is that it has been relying on it. Reason isthe mind--it leaps to the stars without realizing always how it getsthere. It is through reason we get the self-reliance that redeems us. "

"But you!" I exclaimed. "You rely on something else besides reason?"

"Yes, it is true, " he explained gently, "but that ThingOther-than-Ourselves we feel stirring in us is power, and that power, orthe Source of it, seems to have given us our reason for guidance--if itwere not so we shouldn't have a semblance of freedom. For there isneither virtue nor development in finding the path if we are guided. Wedo rely on that power for movement--and in the moments when it iswithdrawn we are helpless. Both the power and the reason are God's. "

"But the Church, " I was moved by some untraced thought to ask, "youbelieve there is a future for the Church?"

"A church of all those who disseminate truth, foster open-mindedness, serve humanity and radiate faith, " he replied--but as though he werespeaking to himself, not to me. .. . 

A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and the woman of thehouse entered to say that Dr. Hepburn had arrived. I rose and shookKrebs's hand: sheer inability to express my emotion drove me tocommonplaces. 

"I'll come in soon again, if I may, " I told him. 

"Do, Paret, " he said, "it's done me good to talk to you--more good thanyou imagine. "

I was unable to answer him, but I glanced back from the doorway to seehim smiling after me. On my way down the stairs I bumped into the doctoras he ascended. The dingy brown parlour was filled with men, standing ingroups and talking in subdued voices. I hurried into the street, and onthe sidewalk stopped face to face with Perry Blackwood. 

"Hugh!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to inquire for Krebs, " I answered. "I've seen him. "

"You--you've been talking to him?" Perry demanded. 

I nodded. He stared at me for a moment with an astonishment to which Iwas wholly indifferent. He did not seem to know just how to act. 

"Well, it was decent of you, Hugh, I must say. How does he seem?"

"Not at all like--like what you'd expect, in his manner. "

"No, " agreed Perry agitatedly, "no, he wouldn't. My God, we've lost a bigman in him. "

"I think we have, " I said. 

He stared at me again, gave me his hand awkwardly, and went into thehouse. It was not until I had walked the length of the block that I beganto realize what a shock my presence there must have been to him, with hishead full of the contrast between this visit and my former attitude. Could it be that it was only the night before I had made a speech againsthim and his associates? It is interesting that my mind rejected all senseof anomaly and inconsistency. Krebs possessed me; I must have been inreality extremely agitated, but this sense of being possessed seemed aquiet one. An amazing thing had happened--and yet I was not amazed. TheKrebs I had seen was the man I had known for many years, the man I hadridiculed, despised and oppressed, but it seemed to me then that he hadbeen my friend and intimate all my life: more than that, I had an oddfeeling he had always been a part of me, and that now had begun to takeplace a merging of personality. Nor could I feel that he was a dying man. He would live on. .. . 

I could not as yet sort and appraise, reduce to order the possessions hehad wished to turn over to me. 

It was noon, and people were walking past me in the watery, dilutedsunlight, men in black coats and top hats and women in bizarre, complicated costumes bright with colour. I had reached the morerespectable portion of the city, where the churches were emptying. Thesevery people, whom not long ago I would have acknowledged as my own kind, now seemed mildly animated automatons, wax figures. The day was likehundreds of Sundays I had known, the city familiar, yet passing strange. I walked like a ghost through it. .. . 

XXVI. 

Accompanied by young Dr. Strafford, I went to California. My physicalillness had been brief. Dr. Brooke had taken matters in his own hands andordered an absolute rest, after dwelling at some length on the viciouspace set by modern business and the lack of consideration and knowledgeshown by men of affairs for their bodies. There was a limit to the wrackand strain which the human organism could stand. He must of course havesuspected the presence of disturbing and disintegrating factors, but heconfined himself to telling me that only an exceptional constitution hadsaved me from a serious illness; he must in a way have comprehended why Idid not wish to go abroad, and have my family join me on the Riviera, asTom Peters proposed. California had been my choice, and Dr. Brookerecommended the climate of Santa Barbara. 

High up on the Montecito hills I found a villa beside the gateway of oneof the deep canons that furrow the mountain side, and day after day I layin a chair on the sunny terrace, with a continually recurring amazementat the brilliancy of my surroundings. In the early morning I looked downon a feathery mist hiding the world, a mist presently to be shot withsilver and sapphire-blue, dissolved by slow enchantment until there layrevealed the plain and the shimmering ocean with its distant islandstrembling in the haze. At sunset my eyes sought the mountains, mountainsunreal, like glorified scenery of grand opera, with violet shadows in thewooded canon clefts, and crags of pink tourmaline and ruby against theskies. All day long in the tempered heat flowers blazed around me, insects hummed, lizards darted in and out of the terrace wall, birdsflashed among the checkered shadows of the live oaks. That grove ofgnarled oaks summoned up before me visions of some classic villa poisedabove Grecian seas, shining amidst dark foliage, the refuge of forgottenkings. Below me, on the slope, the spaced orange trees were heavy withgolden fruit. 

After a while, as I grew stronger, I was driven down and allowed to walkon the wide beach that stretched in front of the gay houses facing thesea. Cormorants dived under the long rollers that came crashing in fromthe Pacific; gulls wheeled and screamed in the soft wind; alert littlebirds darted here and there with incredible swiftness, leaving tinyfootprints across the ribs and furrows of the wet sand. Far to thesouthward a dark barrier of mountains rose out of the sea. Sometimes Isat with my back against the dunes watching the drag of the outgoingwater rolling the pebbles after it, making a gleaming floor for the lightto dance. 

At first I could not bear to recall the events that had preceded andfollowed my visit to Krebs that Sunday morning. My illness had begun thatnight; on the Monday Tom Peters had come to the Club and insisted upon mybeing taken to his house. .. . When I had recovered sufficiently there hadbeen rather a pathetic renewal of our friendship. Perry came to see me. Their attitude was one of apprehension not unmixed with wonder; andthough they, knew of the existence of a mental crisis, suspected, in allprobability, some of the causes of it, they refrained carefully from allcomments, contenting themselves with telling me when I was well enoughthat Krebs had died quite suddenly that Sunday afternoon; that hisdeath--occurring at such a crucial moment--had been sufficient to turnthe tide of the election and make Edgar Greenhalge mayor. Thousands whohad failed to understand Hermann Krebs, but whom he had neverthelessstirred and troubled, suddenly awoke to the fact that he had had elementsof greatness. .. . 

My feelings in those first days at Santa Barbara may be likened, indeed, to those of a man who has passed through a terrible accident that hasdeprived him of sight or hearing, and which he wishes to forget. What Iwas most conscious of then was an aching sense of loss--an ache that bydegrees became a throbbing pain as life flowed back into me, re-inflamingonce more my being with protest and passion, arousing me to revoltagainst the fate that had overtaken me. I even began at moments to feel afierce desire to go back and take up again the fight from which I hadbeen so strangely removed--removed by the agency of things still obscure. I might get Nancy yet, beat down her resistance, overcome her, if only Icould be near her and see her. But even in the midst of these surges ofpassion I was conscious of the birth of a new force I did not understand, and which I resented, that had arisen to give battle to my passions anddesires. This struggle was not mentally reflected as a debate betweenright and wrong, as to whether I should or should not be justified intaking Nancy if I could get her: it seemed as though some new and smallyet dogged intruder had forced an entrance into me, an insignificantpigmy who did not hesitate to bar the pathway of the reviving giant of mydesires. These contests sapped my strength. It seemed as though in myisolation I loved Nancy, I missed her more than ever, and the flavour shegave to life. 

Then Hermann Krebs began to press himself on me. I use the word asexpressive of those early resentful feelings, --I rather pictured him thenas the personification of an hostile element in the universe that hadbrought about my miseries and accomplished my downfall; I attributed thedisagreeable thwarting of my impulses to his agency; I did not wish tothink of him, for he stood somehow for a vague future I feared tocontemplate. Yet the illusion of his presence, once begun, continued togrow upon me, and I find myself utterly unable to describe that strugglein which he seemed to be fighting as against myself for my confidence;that process whereby he gradually grew as real to me as though he stilllived--until I could almost hear his voice and see his smile. At momentsI resisted wildly, as though my survival depended on it; at other momentshe seemed to bring me peace. One day I recalled as vividly as though itwere taking place again that last time I had been with him; I seemed oncemore to be listening to the calm yet earnest talk ranging over so manytopics, politics and government, economics and science and religion. Idid not yet grasp the synthesis he had made of them all, but I saw themnow all focussed in him elements he had drawn from human lives and humanexperiences. I think it was then I first felt the quickenings of a newlife to be born in travail and pain. .. . Wearied, yet exalted, I sank downon a stone bench and gazed out at the little island of Santa Cruz afloaton the shimmering sea. 

I have mentioned my inability to depict the terrible struggle that wenton in my soul. It seems strange that Nietzsche--that most ruthless ofphilosophers to the romantic mind!--should express it for me. "The geniusof the heart, from contact with which every man goes away richer, not'blessed' and overcome, . .. . But richer himself, fresher to himself thanbefore, opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing wind; moreuncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more bruised; but full of hopes whichas yet lack names, full of a new will and striving, full of a newunwillingness and counterstriving. ". .. . 

Such was my experience with Hermann Krebs. How keenly I remember that newunwillingness and counter-striving! In spite of the years it has notwholly died down, even to-day. .. . 

Almost coincident with these quickenings of which I have spoken was theconsciousness of a hunger stronger than the craving for bread and meat, and I began to meditate on my ignorance, on the utter inadequacy andinsufficiency of my early education, on my neglect of the new learningduring the years that had passed since I left Harvard. And I rememberedKrebs's words--that we must "reeducate ourselves. " What did I know? Asystem of law, inherited from another social order, that was utterlyunable to cope with the complexities and miseries and injustices of amodern industrial world. I had spent my days in mastering an inadequateand archaic code--why? in order that I might learn how to evade it? Thisin itself condemned it. What did I know of life? of the shining universethat surrounded me? What did I know of the insect and the flower, of thelaws that moved the planets and made incandescent the suns? of the humanbody, of the human soul and its instincts? Was this knowledge acquired atsuch cost of labour and life and love by my fellow-men of so little worthto me that I could ignore it? declare that it had no significance for me?no bearing on my life and conduct? If I were to rise and go forward--andI now felt something like a continued impulse, in spite of relaxationsand revolts--I must master this knowledge, it must be my guide, form thebasis of my creed. I--who never had had a creed, never felt the need ofone! For lack of one I had been rudely jolted out of the frail shell Ihad thought so secure, and stood, as it were, naked and shivering to thestorms, staring at a world that was no function of me, after all. Myproblem, indeed, was how to become a function of it. .. . 

I resolved upon a course of reading, but it was a question what books toget. Krebs could have told me, if he had lived. I even thought once ofwriting Perry Blackwood to ask him to make a list of the volumes inKrebs's little library; but I was ashamed to do this. 

Dr. Strafford still remained with me. Not many years out of the medicalschool, he had inspired me with a liking for him and a respect for hisprofession, and when he informed me one day that he could no longerconscientiously accept the sum I was paying him, I begged him to stay on. He was a big and wholesome young man, companionable, yet quiet andunobtrusive, watchful without appearing to be so, with the innate as wellas the cultivated knowledge of psychology characteristic of the bestmodern physicians. When I grew better I came to feel that he had givenhis whole mind to the study of my case, though he never betrayed it inhis conversation. 

"Strafford, " I said to him one morning with such an air of unconcern as Icould muster, "I've an idea I'd like to read a little science. Could yourecommend a work on biology?"

I chose biology because I thought he would know something about it. 

"Popular biology, Mr. Paret?"

"Well, not too popular, " I smiled. "I think it would do me good to use mymind, to chew on something. Besides, you can help me over the toughplaces. "

He returned that afternoon with two books. 

"I've been rather fortunate in getting these, " he said. "One is fairlyelementary. They had it at the library. And the other--" he pauseddelicately, "I didn't know whether you might be interested in the latestspeculations on the subject. "

"Speculations?" I repeated. 

"Well, the philosophy of it. " He almost achieved a blush under his tan. He held out the second book on the philosophy of the organism. "It's thework of a German scientist who stands rather high. I read it last winter, and it interested me. I got it from a clergyman I know who is spendingthe winter in Santa Barbara. "

"A clergyman!"

Strafford laughed. "An 'advanced' clergyman, " he explained. "Oh, a lot ofthem are reading science now. I think it's pretty decent of them. "

I looked at Strafford, who towered six feet three, and it suddenly struckme that he might be one of the forerunners of a type our universitieswere about to turn out. I wondered what he believed. Of one thing I wassure, that he was not in the medical profession to make money. That was afaith in itself. 

I began with the elementary work. 

"You'd better borrow a Century Dictionary, " I said. 

"That's easy, " he said, and actually achieved it, with the clergyman'said. 

The absorption in which I fought my way through those books may proveinteresting to future generations, who, at Sunday-school age, when thefable of Adam and Eve was painfully being drummed into me (without anymention of its application), will be learning to think straight, acquiring easily in early youth what I failed to learn until after forty. And think of all the trouble and tragedy that will have been averted. Itis true that I had read some biology at Cambridge, which I had promptlyforgotten; it had not been especially emphasized by my instructors asrelated to life--certainly not as related to religion: such incidents asthat of Adam and Eve occupied the religious field exclusively. I had beencompelled to commit to memory, temporarily, the matter in those books;but what I now began to perceive was that the matter was secondarycompared to the view point of science--and this had been utterlyneglected. As I read, I experienced all the excitement of anold-fashioned romance, but of a romance of such significance as to touchthe very springs of existence; and above all I was impressed with theintegrity of the scientific method--an integrity commensurate with thedignity of man--that scorned to quibble to make out a case, to affirmsomething that could not be proved. 

Little by little I became familiar with the principles of embryonicevolution, ontogeny, and of biological evolution, phylogeny; realized, for the first time, my own history and that of the ancestors from whom Ihad developed and descended. I, this marvellously complicated being, tornby desires and despairs, was the result of the union of two microscopiccells. "All living things come from the egg, " such had been Harvey'sdictum. The result was like the tonic of a cold douche. I began to feelcleansed and purified, as though something sticky-sweet which all my lifehad clung to me had been washed away. Yet a question arose, an insistentquestion that forever presses itself on the mind of man; how could theseapparently chemical and mechanical processes, which the author of thebook contented himself with recording, account for me? The spermia dartsfor the egg, and pierces it; personal history begins. But what mysteriousshaping force is it that repeats in the individual the history of therace, supervises the orderly division of the cells, by degrees directsthe symmetry, sets aside the skeleton and digestive tract and supervisesthe structure?

I took up the second book, that on the philosophy of the organism, toread in its preface that a much-to-be-honoured British nobleman hadestablished a foundation of lectures in a Scotch University forforwarding the study of a Natural Theology. The term possessed me. Unlikethe old theology woven of myths and a fanciful philosophy of the decadentperiod of Greece, natural theology was founded on science itself, andscientists were among those who sought to develop it. Here was asynthesis that made a powerful appeal, one of the many signs and portentsof a new era of which I was dimly becoming cognizant; and now that Ilooked for signs, I found them everywhere, in my young Doctor, in Krebs, in references in the texts; indications of a new order beginning to makeitself felt in a muddled, chaotic human world, which might--which musthave a parallel with the order that revealed itself in the egg! Might notboth, physical and social, be due to the influence of the same invisible, experimenting, creating Hand?

My thoughts lingered lovingly on this theology so well named "natural, "on its conscientiousness, its refusal to affirm what it did not prove, onits lack of dogmatic dictums and infallible revelations; yet it gave methe vision of a new sanction whereby man might order his life, a sanctionfrom which was eliminated fear and superstition and romantic hope, asanction whose doctrines--unlike those of the sentimental theology--didnot fly in the face of human instincts and needs. Nor was it a theologydevoid of inspiration and poetry, though poetry might be called itscomplement. With all that was beautiful and true in the myths dear tomankind it did not conflict, annulling only the vicious dogmatism ofliteral interpretation. In this connection I remembered something thatKrebs had said--in our talk about poetry and art, --that these wereemotion, religion expressed by the tools reason had evolved. Music, hehad declared, came nearest to the cry of the human soul. .. . 

That theology cleared for faith an open road, made of faith a reasonablething, yet did not rob it of a sense of high adventure; cleansed it ofthe taints of thrift and selfish concern. In this reaffirmation ofvitalism there might be a future, yes, an individual future, yet it wasfar from the smug conception of salvation. Here was a faith conferred bythe freedom of truth; a faith that lost and regained itself in life; itwas dynamic in its operation; for, as Lessing said, the searching aftertruth, and not its possession, gives happiness to man. In the words of anAmerican scientist, taken from his book on Heredity, "The evolutionaryidea has forced man to consider the probable future of his own race onearth and to take measures to control that future, a matter he hadpreviously left largely to fate. "

Here indeed was another sign of the times, to find in a strictlyscientific work a sentence truly religious! As I continued to read theseworks, I found them suffused with religion, religion of a kind andquality I had not imagined. The birthright of the spirit of man wasfreedom, freedom to experiment, to determine, to create--to createhimself, to create society in the image of God! Spiritual creation thefunction of cooperative man through the coming ages, the task that was tomake him divine. Here indeed was the germ of a new sanction, of a newmotive, of a new religion that strangely harmonized with the concepts ofthe old--once the dynamic power of these was revealed. 

I had been thinking of my family--of my family in terms of Matthew--andyet with a growing yearning that embraced them all. I had not informedMaude of my illness, and I had managed to warn Tom Peters not to do so. Ihad simply written her that after the campaign I had gone for a rest toCalifornia; yet in her letters to me, after this information had reachedher, I detected a restrained anxiety and affection that troubled me. Sequences of words curiously convey meanings and implications thattranscend their literal sense, true thoughts and feelings are difficultto disguise even in written speech. Could it be possible after all thathad happened that Maude still loved me? I continually put the thoughtaway from me, but continually it returned to haunt me. Suppose Maudecould not help loving me, in spite of my weaknesses and faults, even as Iloved Nancy in spite of hers? Love is no logical thing. 

It was Matthew I wanted, Matthew of whom I thought, and trivial, long-forgotten incidents of the past kept recurring to me constantly. Istill received his weekly letters; but he did not ask why, since I hadtaken a vacation, I had not come over to them. He represented the medium, the link between Maude and me that no estrangement, no separation couldbreak. 

All this new vision of mine was for him, for the coming generation, thesoil in which it must be sown, the Americans of the future. And who sowell as Matthew, sensitive yet brave, would respond to it? I wished notonly to give him what I had begun to grasp, to study with him, to be hiscompanion and friend, but to spare him, if possible, some of my ownmistakes and sufferings and punishments. But could I go back? Happycoincidences of desires and convictions had been so characteristic ofthat other self I had been struggling to cast off: I had so easily beenpersuaded, when I had had a chance of getting Nancy, that it was theright thing to do! And now, in my loneliness, was I not growing just aseager to be convinced that it was my duty to go back to the family whichin the hour of self-sufficiency I had cast off? I had believed in divorcethen--why not now? Well, I still believed in it. I had thought of a unionwith Nancy as something that would bring about the "self-realization thatsprings from the gratification of a great passion, "--an appealing phraseI had read somewhere. But, it was at least a favourable symptom that Iwas willing now to confess that the "self-realization" had been asecondary and sentimental consideration, a rosy, self-created halo togive a moral and religious sanction to my desire. Was I not trying to dothat very thing now? It tortured me to think so; I strove to achieve adetached consideration of the problem, --to arrive at length at a thoughtthat seemed illuminating: that the it "wrongness" or "rightness, " utilityand happiness of all such unions depend upon whether or not they become apart of the woof and warp of the social fabric; in other words, whetherthe gratification of any particular love by divorce and remarriage doesor does not tend to destroy a portion of that fabric. Nancy certainlywould have been justified in divorce. It did not seem in the retrospectthat I would have been: surely not if, after I had married Nancy, I haddeveloped this view of life that seemed to me to be the true view. Ishould have been powerless to act upon it. But the chances were I shouldnot have developed it, since it would seem that any salvation for me atleast must come precisely through suffering, through not getting what Iwanted. Was this equivocating?

My mistake had been in marrying Maude instead of Nancy--a mistake largelydue to my saturation with a false idea of life. Would not the attempt tocut loose from the consequences of that mistake in my individual casehave been futile? But there was a remedy for it--the remedy Krebs hadsuggested: I might still prevent my children from making such a mistake, I might help to create in them what I might have been, and thus find asolution for myself. My errors would then assume a value. 

But the question tortured me: would Maude wish it? Would it be fair toher if she did not? By my long neglect I had forfeited the right to go. And would she agree with my point of view if she did permit me to stay? Ihad less concern on this score, a feeling that that development of hers, which once had irritated me, was in the same direction as my own. .. . 

I have still strangely to record moments when, in spite of theaspirations I had achieved, of the redeeming vision I had gained, at thethought of returning to her I revolted. At such times recollections cameinto my mind of those characteristics in her that had seemed mostresponsible for my alienation. .. . That demon I had fed so mightily stilllived. By what right--he seemed to ask--had I nourished him all theseyears if now I meant to starve him? Thus sometimes he defied me, took onProtean guises, blustered, insinuated, cajoled, managed to make mebelieve that to starve him would be to starve myself, to sap all therewas of power in me. Let me try and see if I could do it! Again hewhispered, to what purpose had I gained my liberty, if now I renouncedit? I could not live in fetters, even though the fetters should beself-imposed. I was lonely now, but I would get over that, and life laybefore me still. 

Fierce and tenacious, steel in the cruelty of his desires, fearful in thehavoc he had wrought, could he be subdued? Foiled, he tore and rentme. .. . 

One morning I rode up through the shady canon, fragrant with bay, to theopen slopes stained smoky-blue by the wild lilac, where the twistedmadrona grows. As I sat gazing down on tiny headlands jutting out into avast ocean my paralyzing indecision came to an end. I turned my horsedown the trail again. I had seen at last that life was bigger than I, bigger than Maude, bigger than our individual wishes and desires. I feltas though heavy shackles had been struck from me. As I neared the house Ispied my young doctor in the garden path, his hands in his pocketswatching a humming-bird poised over the poppies. He greeted me with alook that was not wholly surprise at my early return, that seemed to havein it something of gladness. 

"Strafford, " I said, "I've made up my mind to go to Europe. "

"I have been thinking for some time, Mr. Paret, " he replied, "that asea-voyage is just what you need to set you on your feet. "

I started eastward the next morning, arriving in New York in time tocatch one of the big liners sailing for Havre. On my way across thecontinent I decided to send a cable to Maude at Paris, since it were onlyfair to give her an opportunity to reflect upon the manner in which shewould meet the situation. Save for an impatience which at moments Irestrained with difficulty, the moods that succeeded one another as Ijourneyed did not differ greatly from those I had experienced in the pastmonth. I was alternately exalted and depressed; I hoped and doubted andfeared; my courage, my confidence rose and fell. And yet I was aware ofthe nascence within me of an element that gave me a stability I hadhitherto lacked: I had made my decision, and I felt the stronger for it. 

It was early in March. The annual rush of my countrymen and women forforeign shores had not as yet begun, the huge steamer was far fromcrowded. The faint throbbing of her engines as she glided out on theNorth River tide found its echo within me as I leaned on the heavy railand watched the towers of the city receding in the mist; they becameblurred and ghostlike, fantastic in the grey distance, sad, appealingwith a strange beauty and power. Once the sight of them, sunlit, standingforth sharply against the high blue of American skies, had stirred in methat passion for wealth and power of which they were so marvellously anduniquely the embodiment. I recalled the bright day of my home-coming withMaude, when she too had felt that passion drawing me away from her, afterthe briefest of possessions. .. . Well, I had had it, the power. I hadstormed and gained entrance to the citadel itself. I might have livedhere in New York, secure, defiant of a veering public opinion that enviedwhile it strove to sting. Why was I flinging it all away? Was this asudden resolution of mine, forced by events, precipitated by a failure toachieve what of all things on earth I had most desired? or was it theinevitable result of the development of the Hugh Paret of earlier days, who was not meant for that kind of power?

The vibration of the monster ship increased to a strong, electricpulsation, the water hummed along her sides, she felt the swell of theopen sea. A fine rain began to fall that hid the land--yes, and the lifeI was leaving. I made my way across the glistening deck to the saloonwhere, my newspapers and periodicals neglected, I sat all the morningbeside a window gazing out at the limited, vignetted zone of watersaround the ship. We were headed for the Old World. The wind rose, therain became pelting, mingling with the spume of the whitecaps racingmadly past: within were warmth and luxury, electric lights, open fires, easy chairs, and men and women reading, conversing as unconcernedly asthough the perils of the deep had ceased to be. In all this I found animpelling interest; the naive capacity in me for wonder, so long dormant, had been marvellously opened up once more. I no longer thought of myselfas the important man of affairs; and when in the progress of the voyage Iwas accosted by two or three men I had met and by others who had heard ofme it was only to feel amazement at the remoteness I now felt from aworld whose realities were stocks and bonds, railroads and corporationsand the detested new politics so inimical to the smooth conduct of"business. "

It all sounded like a language I had forgotten. 

It was not until near the end of the passage that we ran out of thestorm. A morning came when I went on deck to survey spaces of a blue andwhite sea swept by the white March sunlight; to discern at length againstthe horizon toward which we sped a cloud of the filmiest and mostdelicate texture and design. Suddenly I divined that the cloud wasFrance! Little by little, as I watched, it took on substance. I made outheadlands and cliffs, and then we were coasting beside them. That night Ishould be in Paris with Maude. My bag was packed, my steamer trunkclosed. I strayed about the decks, in and out of the saloons, wonderingat the indifference of other passengers who sat reading in steamer-chairsor wrote last letters to be posted at Havre. I was filled withimpatience, anticipation, yes, with anxiety concerning the adventure thatwas now so imminent; with wavering doubts. Had I done the wisest thingafter all? I had the familiar experience that often comes just beforereunion after absence of recalling intimate and forgotten impressions ofthose whom I was about to see again the tones of their voices, littlegestures. .. . 

How would they receive me?

The great ship had slowed down and was entering the harbour, carefullythreading her way amongst smaller craft, the passengers lining the railsand gazing at the animated scene, at the quaint and cheerful French citybathed in sunlight. .. . I had reached the dock and was making my waythrough the hurrying and shifting groups toward the steamer train when Isaw Maude. She was standing a little aside, scanning the faces thatpassed her. 

I remember how she looked at me, expectantly, yet timidly, almostfearfully. I kissed her. 

"You've come to meet me!" I exclaimed stupidly. "How are the children?"

"They're very well, Hugh. They wanted to come, too, but I thought itbetter not. "

Her restraint struck me as extraordinary; and while I was thankful forthe relief it brought to a situation which might have been awkward, I wasconscious of resenting it a little. I was impressed and puzzled. As Iwalked along the platform beside her she seemed almost a stranger: I haddifficulty in realizing that she was my wife, the mother of my children. Her eyes were clear, more serious than I recalled them, and her physicalas well as her moral tone seemed to have improved. Her cheeks glowed withhealth, and she wore a becoming suit of dark blue. 

"Did you have a good trip, Hugh?" she asked. 

"Splendid, " I said, forgetting the storm. We took our seats in an emptycompartment. Was she glad to see me? She had come all the way from Paristo meet me! All the embarrassment seemed to be on my side. Was thiscomposure a controlled one or had she indeed attained to theself-sufficiency her manner and presence implied? Such were the questionsrunning through my head. 

"You've really liked Paris?" I asked. 

"Yes, Hugh, and it's been very good for us all. Of course the boys likeAmerica better, but they've learned many things they wouldn't havelearned at home; they both speak French, and Biddy too. Even I haveimproved. "

"I'm sure of it, " I said. 

She flushed. 

"And what else have you been doing?"

"Oh, going to galleries. Matthew often goes with me. I think he quiteappreciates the pictures. Sometimes I take him to the theatre, too, theFrancais. Both boys ride in the Bois with a riding master. It's beenrather a restricted life for them, but it won't have hurt them. It's gooddiscipline. We have little excursions in an automobile on fine days toVersailles and other places of interest around Paris, and Matthew and Ihave learned a lot of history. I have a professor of literature from theSorbonne come in three times a week to give me lessons. "

"I didn't know you cared for literature. "

"I didn't know it either. " She smiled. "Matthew loves it. MonsieurDespard declares he has quite a gift for language. "

Maude had already begun Matthew's education!

"You see a few people?" I inquired. 

"A few. And they have been very kind to us. The Buffons, whom I met atEtretat, and some of their friends, mostly educated French people. "

The little railway carriage in which we sat rocked with speed as we flewthrough the French landscape. I caught glimpses of solid, Norman farmbuildings, of towers and keeps and delicate steeples, and quaint towns;of bare poplars swaying before the March gusts, of green fields ablaze inthe afternoon sun. I took it all in distractedly. Here was Maude besideme, but a Maude I had difficulty in recognizing, whom I did notunderstand: who talked of a life she had built up for herself and thatseemed to satisfy her; one with which I had nothing to do. I could nottell how she regarded my re-intrusion. As she continued to talk, afeeling that was almost desperation grew upon me. I had things to say toher, things that every moment of this sort of intercourse was making moredifficult. And I felt, if I did not say them now, that perhaps I nevershould: that now or never was the appropriate time, and to delay would beto drift into an impossible situation wherein the chance of anunderstanding would be remote. 

There was a pause. How little I had anticipated the courage it would taketo do this thing! My blood was hammering. 

"Maude, " I said abruptly, "I suppose you're wondering why I came overhere. "

She sat gazing at me, very still, but there came into her eyes afrightened look that almost unnerved me. She seemed to wish to speak, tobe unable to. Passively, she let my hand rest on hers. 

"I've been thinking a great deal during the last few months, " I went onunsteadily. "And I've changed a good many of my ideas--that is, I've gotnew ones, about things I never thought of before. I want to say, first, that I do not put forth any claim to come back into your life. I know Ihave forfeited any claim. I've neglected you, and I've neglected thechildren. Our marriage has been on a false basis from the start, and I'vebeen to blame for it. There is more to be said about the chances for asuccessful marriage in these days, but I'm not going to dwell on thatnow, or attempt to shoulder off my shortcomings on my bringing up, on thecivilization in which we have lived. You've tried to do your share, andthe failure hasn't been your fault. I want to tell you first of all thatI recognize your right to live your life from now on, independently ofme, if you so desire. You ought to have the children--" I hesitated amoment. It was the hardest thing I had to say. "I've never troubledmyself about them, I've never taken on any responsibility in regard totheir bringing up. "

"Hugh!" she cried. 

"Wait--I've got more to tell you, that you ought to know. I shouldn't behere to-day if Nancy Durrett had consented to--to get a divorce and marryme. We had agreed to that when this accident happened to Ham, and shewent back to him. I have to tell you that I still love her--I can't sayhow much, or define my feelings toward her now. I've given up all idea ofher. I don't think I'd marry her now, even if I had the chance, and youshould decide to live away from me. I don't know. I'm not so sure ofmyself as I once was. The fact is, Maude, circumstances have been toomuch for me. I've been beaten. And I'm not at all certain that it wasn'ta cowardly thing for me to come back to you at all. "

I felt her hand trembling under mine, but I had not the courage to lookat her. I heard her call my name again a little cry, the very poignancyof pity and distress. It almost unnerved me. 

"I knew that you loved her, Hugh, " she said. "It was only--only a littlewhile after you married me that I found it out. I guessed it--women doguess such things--long before you realized it yourself. You ought tohave married her instead of me. You would have been happier with her. "

I did not answer. 

"I, too, have thought a great deal, " she went on, after a moment. "Ibegan earlier than you, I had to. " I looked up suddenly and saw hersmiling at me, faintly, through her tears. "But I've been thinking more, and learning more since I've been over here. I've come to see that thatour failure hasn't been as much your fault as I once thought, as much asyou yourself declare. You have done me a wrong, and you've done thechildren a wrong. Oh, it is frightful to think how little I knew when Imarried you, but even then I felt instinctively that you didn't love meas I deserved to be loved. And when we came back from Europe I knew thatI couldn't satisfy you, I couldn't look upon life as you saw it, nomatter how hard I tried. I did try, but it wasn't any use. You'll neverknow how much I've suffered all these years. 

"I have been happier here, away from you, with the children; I've had achance to be myself. It isn't that I'm--much. It isn't that I don't needguidance and counsel and--sympathy. I've missed those, but you've nevergiven them to me, and I've been learning more and more to do withoutthem. I don't know why marriage should suddenly have become such amockery and failure in our time, but I know that it is, that ours hasn'tbeen such an exception as I once thought. I've come to believe thatdivorce is often justified. "

"It is justified so far as you are concerned, Maude, " I replied. "It isnot justified for me. I have forfeited, as I say, any rights over you. Ihave been the aggressor and transgressor from the start. You have been agood wife and a good mother, you have been faithful, I have hadabsolutely nothing to complain of. "

"Sometimes I think I might have tried harder, " she said. "At least Imight have understood better. I was stupid. But everything went wrong. And I saw you growing away from me all the time, Hugh, growing away fromthe friends who were fond of you, as though you were fading in thedistance. It wasn't wholly because--because of Nancy that I left you. That gave me an excuse--an excuse for myself. Long before that I realizedmy helplessness, I knew that whatever I might have done was past doing. "

"Yes, I know, " I assented. 

We sat in silence for a while. The train was skirting an ancient town seton a hill, crowned with a castle and a Gothic church whose windows wereafire in the setting sun. 

"Maude, " I said, "I have not come to plead, to appeal to your pity asagainst your judgment and reason. I can say this much, that if I do notlove you, as the word is generally understood, I have a new respect foryou, and a new affection, and I think that these will grow. I have nodoubt that there are some fortunate people who achieve the kind of mutuallove for which it is human to yearn, whose passion is naturallytransmuted into a feeling that may be even finer, but I am inclined tothink, even in such a case, that some effort and unselfishness arenecessary. At any rate, that has been denied to us, and we can never knowit from our own experience. We can only hope that there is such athing, --yes, and believe in it and work for it. "

"Work for it, Hugh?" she repeated. 

"For others--for our children. I have been thinking about the children agreat deal in the last few months especially about Matthew. "

"You always loved him best, " she said. 

"Yes, " I admitted. "I don't know why it should be so. And in spite of it, I have neglected him, neglected them, failed to appreciate them all. Idid not deserve them. I have reproached myself, I have suffered for it, not as much as I deserved. I came to realize that the children were abond between us, that their existence meant something greater than eitherof us. But at the same time I recognized that I had lost my right overthem, that it was you who had proved yourself worthy. .. . It was throughthe children that I came to think differently, to feel differently towardyou. I have come to you to ask your forgiveness. "

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried. 

"Wait, " I said. .. . "I have come to you, through them. I want to say againthat I should not be here if I had obtained my desires. Yet there is moreto it than that. I think I have reached a stage where I am able to saythat I am glad I didn't obtain them. I see now that this coming to youwas something I have wanted to do all along, but it was the cowardlything to do, after I had failed, for it was not as though I had conqueredthe desires, the desires conquered me. At any rate, I couldn't come toyou to encumber you, to be a drag upon you. I felt that I must havesomething to offer you. I've got a plan, Maude, for my life, for ourlives. I don't know whether I can make a success of it, and you areentitled to decline to take the risk. I don't fool myself that it will beall plain sailing, that there won't be difficulties and discouragements. But I'll promise to try. "

"What is it?" she asked, in a low voice. "I--I think I know. "

"Perhaps you have guessed it. I am willing to try to devote what is leftof my life to you and to them. And I need your help. I acknowledge it. Let us try to make more possible for them the life we have missed. "

"The life we have missed!" she said. 

"Yes. My mistakes, my failures, have brought us to the edge of aprecipice. We must prevent, if we can, those mistakes and failures forthem. The remedy for unhappy marriages, for all mistaken, selfish andartificial relationships in life is a preventive one. My plan is that wetry to educate ourselves together, take advantage of the accruingknowledge that is helping men and women to cope with the problems, tothink straight. We can then teach our children to think straight, toavoid the pitfalls into which we have fallen. "

I paused. Maude did not reply. Her face was turned away from me, towardsthe red glow of the setting sun above the hills. 

"You have been doing this all along, you have had the vision, the truevision, while I lacked it, Maude. I offer to help you. But if you thinkit is impossible for us to live together, if you believe my feelingtoward you is not enough, if you don't think I can do what I propose, orif you have ceased to care for me--"

She turned to me with a swift movement, her eyes filled with tears. 

"Oh, Hugh, don't say any more. I can't stand it. How little you know, forall your thinking. I love you, I always have loved you. I grew to beashamed of it, but I'm not any longer. I haven't any pride any more, andI never want to have it again. "

"You're willing to take me as I am, --to try?" I said. 

"Yes, " she answered, "I'm willing to try. " She smiled at me. "And I havemore faith than you, Hugh. I think we'll succeed. ". .. . 

At nine o'clock that night, when we came out through the gates of thebig, noisy station, the children were awaiting us. They had changed, theyhad grown. Biddy kissed me shyly, and stood staring up at me. 

"We'll take you out to-morrow and show you how we can ride, " saidMoreton. 

Matthew smiled. He stood very close to me, with his hand through my arm. 

"You're going to stay, father?" he asked. 

"I'm going to stay, Matthew, " I answered, "until we all go back toAmerica. ". .. .