When I began to pen these wandering confessions ­or whatever they may properly be called ­it was with the rather hazy purpose of endeavoring to ascertain why it was that I, universally conceded to be a successful man, was not happy.  As I reread what I have written I realize that, instead of being a successful man in any way, I am an abject failure.

The preceding pages need no comment.  The facts speak for themselves.  I had everything in my favor at the start.  I had youth, health, natural ability, a good wife, friends and opportunity; but I blindly accepted the standards of the men I saw about me and devoted my energies to the achievement of the single object that was theirs ­the getting of money.

Thirty years have gone by.  I have been a leader in the race and I have secured a prize.  But at what cost?  I am old ­a bundle of undesirable habits; my health is impaired; my wife has become a frivolous and extravagant woman; I have no real friends:  my children are strangers to me, and I have no home.  I have no interest in my family, my social acquaintances, or in the affairs of the city or nation.  I take no sincere pleasure in art or books or outdoor life.  The only genuine satisfaction that is mine is in the first fifteen-minutes’ flush after my afternoon cocktail and the preliminary course or two of my dinner.  I have nothing to look forward to.  No matter how much money I make, there is no use to which I can put it that will increase my happiness.

From a material standpoint I have achieved everything I can possibly desire.  No king or emperor ever approximated the actual luxury of my daily life.  No one ever accomplished more apparent work with less actual personal effort.  I am a master at the exploitation of intellectual labor.

I have motors, saddle-horses, and a beautiful summer cottage at a cool and fashionable resort.  I travel abroad when the spirit moves me; I entertain lavishly and am entertained in return; I smoke the costliest cigars; I have a reputation at the bar, and I have an established income large enough to sustain at least sixty intelligent people and their families in moderate comfort.  This must be true, for on the one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month I pay my chauffeur he supports a wife and two children, sends them to school and on a three-months’ vacation into the country during the summer.  And, instead of all these things giving me any satisfaction, I am miserable and discontented.

The fact that I now realize the selfishness of my life led me to-day to resolve to do something for others ­and this resolve had an unexpected and surprising consequence.

Heretofore I had been engaged in an introspective study of my own attitude toward my fellows.  I had not sought the evidence of outside parties.  What has just occurred has opened my eyes to the fact that others have not been nearly so blind as I have been myself.

James Hastings, my private secretary, is a man of about forty-five years of age.  He has been in my employ fifteen years.  He is a fine type of man and deserves the greatest credit for what he has accomplished.  Beginning life as an office boy at three dollars a week, he educated himself by attending school at night, learned stenography and typewriting, and has become one of the most expert law stenographers in Wall Street.  I believe that, without being a lawyer, he knows almost as much law as I do.

Gradually I have raised his wages until he is now getting fifty dollars a week.  In addition to this he does night-work at the Bar Association at double rates, acts as stenographer at legal references, and does, I understand, some trifling literary work besides.  I suppose he earns from thirty-five hundred to five thousand dollars a year.  About thirteen years ago he married one of the woman stenographers in the office ­a nice girl she was too ­and now they have a couple of children.  He lives somewhere in the country and spends an unconscionable time on the train daily, yet he is always on hand at an early hour.

What happened to-day was this:  A peculiarly careful piece of work had been done in the way of looking up a point of corporation law, and I inquired who was responsible for briefing it.  Hastings smiled and said he had done so.  As I looked at him it suddenly dawned on me that this man might make real money if he studied for the bar and started in practice for himself.  He had brains and an enormous capacity for work.  I should dislike losing so capable a secretary, but it would be doing him a good turn to let him know what I thought; and it was time that I did somebody a good turn from an unselfish motive.

“Hastings,” I said, “you’re too good to be merely a stenographer.  Why don’t you study law and make some money?  I’ll keep you here in my office, throw things in your way and push you along.  What do you say?”

He flushed with gratification, but, after a moment’s respectful hesitation, shook his head.

“Thank you very much, sir,” he replied, “but I wouldn’t care to do it.  I really wouldn’t!”

Though I am fond of the man, his obstinacy nettled me.

“Look here!” I cried.  “I’m offering you an unusual chance.  You had better think twice before you decline such an opportunity to make something of yourself.  If you don’t take it you’ll probably remain what you are as long as you live.  Seize it and you may do as well as I have.”

Hastings smiled faintly.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” he repeated.  “I’m grateful to you for your interest; but ­I hope you’ll excuse me ­I wouldn’t change places with you for a million dollars!  No ­not for ten million!”

He blurted out the last two sentences like a schoolboy, standing and twisting his notebook between his fingers.

There was something in his tone that dashed my spirits like a bucket of cold water.  He had not meant to be impertinent.  He was the most truthful man alive.  What did he mean?  Not willing to change places with me!  It was my turn to flush.

“Oh, very well!” I answered in as indifferent a manner as I could assume.  “It’s up to you.  I merely meant to do you a good turn.  We’ll think no more about it.”

I continued to think about it, however.  Would not change places with me ­a fifty-dollar-a-week clerk!

Hastings’ pointblank refusal of my good offices, coming as it did hard on the heels of my own realization of failure, left me sick at heart.  What sort of an opinion could this honest fellow, my mere employee ­dependent on my favor for his very bread ­have of me, his master?  Clearly not a very high one!  I was stung to the quick ­chagrined; ashamed.

It was Saturday morning.  The week’s work was practically over.  All of my clients were out of town ­golfing, motoring, or playing poker at Cedarhurst.  There was nothing for me to do at the office but to indorse half a dozen checks for deposit.  I lit a cigar and looked out the window of my cave down on the hurrying throng below.  A resolute, never-pausing stream of men plodded in each direction.  Now and then others dashed out of the doors of marble buildings and joined the crowd.

On the river ferryboats were darting here and there from shore to shore.  There was a bedlam of whistles, the thunder of steam winches, the clang of surface cars, the rattle of typewriters.  To what end?  Down at the curb my motor car was in waiting.  I picked up my hat and passed into the outer office.

“By the way, Hastings,” I said casually as I went by his desk, “where are you living now?”

He looked up smilingly.

“Pleasantdale ­up Kensico way,” he answered.

I shifted my feet and pulled once or twice on my cigar.  I had taken a strange resolve.

“Er ­going to be in this afternoon?” I asked.  “I’m off for a run and I might drop in for a cup of tea about five o’clock.”

“Oh, will you, sir!” he exclaimed with pleasure.  “We shall be delighted.  Mine is the house at the crossroads ­with the red roof.”

“Well,” said I, “you may see me ­but don’t keep your tea waiting.”

As I shot uptown in my car I had almost the feeling of a coming adventure.  Hastings was a good sort!  I respected him for his bluntness of speech.  At the cigar counter in the club I replenished my case.

Then I went into the reception room, where I found a bunch of acquaintances sitting round the window.  They hailed me boisterously.  What would I have to drink?  I ordered a “Hannah Elias” and sank into a chair.  One of them was telling about the newest scandal in the divorce line:  The president of one of our largest trust companies had been discovered to have been leading a double life ­running an apartment on the West Side for a haggard and passee showgirl.

“You just tell me ­I’d like to know ­why a fellow like that makes such a damned fool of himself!  Salary of fifty thousand dollars a year!  Big house; high-class wife and family; yacht ­everything anybody wants.  Not a drinking man either.  It defeats me!” he said.

None of the group seemed able to suggest an answer.  I had just tossed off my “Hannah Elias.”

“I think I know,” I hazarded meditatively.  They turned with one accord and stared at me.  “There was nothing else for him to do,” I continued, “except to blow his brains out.”

The raconteur grunted.

“I don’t just know the meaning of that!” he remarked.  “I thought he was a friend of yours!”

“Oh, I like him well enough,” I answered, getting up.  “Thanks for the drink.  I’ve got to be getting home.  My wife is giving a little luncheon to thirty valuable members of society.”

I was delayed on Fifth Avenue and when the butler opened the front door the luncheon party was already seated at the table.  A confused din emanated from behind the portieres of the dining room, punctuated by shouts of female laughter.  The idea of going in and overloading my stomach for an hour, while strenuously attempting to produce light conversation, sickened me.  I shook my head.

“Just tell your mistress that I’ve been suddenly called away on business,” I directed the butler and climbed back into my motor.

“Up the river!” I said to my chauffeur.

We spun up the Riverside Drive, past rows of rococo apartment houses, along the Lafayette Boulevard and through Yonkers.  It was a glorious autumn day.  The Palisades shone red and yellow with turning foliage.  There was a fresh breeze down the river and a thousand whitecaps gleamed in the sunlight.  Overhead great white clouds moved majestically athwart the blue.  But I took no pleasure in it all.  I was suffering from an acute mental and physical depression.  Like Hamlet I had lost all my mirth ­whatever I ever had ­and the clouds seemed but a “pestilent congregation of vapors.”  I sat in a sort of trance as I was whirled farther and farther away from the city.

At last I noticed that my silver motor clock was pointing to half-past two, and I realized that neither the chauffeur nor myself had had anything to eat since breakfast.  We were entering a tiny village.  Just beyond the main square a sign swinging above the sidewalk invited wayfarers to a “quick lunch.”  I pressed the button and we pulled to the gravel walk.

“Lunch!” I said, and opened the wire-netted door.  Inside there were half a dozen oilcloth-covered tables and a red-cheeked young woman was sewing in a corner.

“What have you got?” I asked, inspecting the layout.

“Tea, coffee, milk ­eggs any style you want,” she answered cheerily.  Then she laughed in a good-natured way.  “There’s a real hotel at Poughkeepsie ­five miles along,” she added.

“I don’t want a real hotel,” I replied.  “What are you laughing at?”

Then I realized that I must look rather civilized for a motorist.

“You don’t look as you’d care for eggs,” she said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I retorted.  “I want three of the biggest, yellowest, roundest poached eggs your fattest hen ever laid ­and a schooner of milk.”

The girl vanished into the back of the shop and presently I could smell toast.  I discovered I was extremely hungry.  In about eight minutes she came back with a tray on which was a large glass of creamy milk and the triple eggs for which I had prayed.  They were spherical, white and wabbly.

“You’re a prize poacher,” I remarked, my spirits reviving.

She smiled appreciatively.

“Going far?” she inquired, sitting down quite at ease at one of the neighboring tables.

I looked pensively at her pleasant face across the eggs.

“That’s a question,” I answered.  “I can’t make out whether I’ve been moving on or just going round and round in a circle.”

She looked puzzled for an instant.  Then she said shrewdly: 

“Perhaps you’ve really been going back.”

“Perhaps,” I admitted.

I have never tasted anything quite so good as those eggs and that milk.  From where I sat I could look far up the Hudson; the wind from the river swayed the red maples round the door of the quick lunch; and from the kitchen came the homely smells of my lost youth.  I had a fleeting vision of the party at my house, now playing bridge for ten cents a point; and my soul lifted its head for the first time in weeks.

“How far is it to Pleasantdale?”

“A long way,” answered the girl; “but you can make a connection by trolley that will get you there in about two hours.”

“Suits me!” I said and stepped to the door.  “You can go, James; I’ll get myself home.”

He cast on me a scandalized look.

“Very good, sir!” he answered and touched his cap.

He must have thought me either a raving lunatic or an unabashed adventurer.  A moment more and the car disappeared in the direction of the city.  I was free!  The girl made no attempt to conceal her amusement.

Behind the door was a gray felt hat.  I took it down and looked at the size.  It was within a quarter of my own.

“Look here,” I suggested, holding out a five-dollar bill, “I want a Wishing Cap.  Let me take this, will you?”

“The house is yours!” she laughed.

Over on the candy counter was a tray of corncob pipes.  I helped myself to one, to a package of tobacco and a box of matches.  I hung my derby on the vacant peg behind the door.  Then I turned to my hostess.

“You’re a good girl,” I said.  “Good luck to you.”

For a moment something softer came into her eyes.

“And good luck to you, sir!” she replied.  As I passed down the steps she threw after me:  “I hope you’ll find ­what you’re looking for!”

In my old felt hat and smoking my corncob I trudged along the road in the mellow sunlight, almost happy.  By and by I reached the trolley line; and for five cents, in company with a heterogeneous lot of country folks, Italian laborers and others, was transported an absurdly long distance across the state of New York to a wayside station.

There I sat on a truck on the platform and chatted with a husky, broad-shouldered youth, who said he was the “baggage smasher,” until finally a little smoky train appeared and bore me southward.  It was the best holiday I had had in years ­and I was sorry when we pulled into Pleasantdale and I took to my legs again.

In the fading afternoon light it indeed seemed a pleasant, restful place.  Comfortable cottages, each in its own yard, stood in neighborly rows along the shaded street.  Small boys were playing football in a field adjoining a schoolhouse.

Presently the buildings became more scattered and I found myself following a real country road, though still less than half a mile from the station.  Ahead it divided and in the resulting triangle, behind a well-clipped hedge, stood a pretty cottage with a red roof ­Hastings’, I was sure.

I tossed away my pipe and opened the gate.  A rather pretty woman of about thirty-five was reading in a red hammock; there were half a dozen straw easy chairs and near by a teatable, with the kettle steaming.  Mrs. Hastings looked up at my step on the gravel path and smiled a welcome.

“Jim has been playing golf over at the club ­he didn’t expect you until five,” she said, coming to meet me.

“I don’t care whether he comes or not,” I returned gallantly.  “I want to see you.  Besides, I’m as hungry as a bear.”  She raised her eyebrows.  “I had only an egg or so and a glass of milk for luncheon, and I have walked ­miles!”

“Oh!” she exclaimed.  I could see she had had quite a different idea of her erstwhile employer; but my statement seemed to put us on a more friendly footing from the start.

“I love walking too,” she hastened to say.  “Isn’t it wonderful to-day?  We get weeks of such weather as this every autumn.”  She busied herself over the teacups and then, stepping inside the door for a moment, returned with a plate piled high with buttered toast, and another with sandwiches of grape jelly.

“Carmen is out,” she remarked; “otherwise you should be served in greater style.”

“Carmen?”

“Carmen is our maid, butler and valet,” she explained.  “It’s such a relief to get her out of the way once in a while and have the house all to oneself.  That’s one of the reasons I enjoy our two-weeks’ camping trip so much every summer.”

“You like the woods?”

“Better than anything, I think ­except just being at home here.  And the children have the time of their lives ­fishing and climbing trees, and watching for deer in the boguns.”

The gate clicked at that moment and Hastings, golf bag on shoulders, came up the path.  He looked lean, brown, hard and happy.

“Just like me to be late!” he apologized.  “I had no idea it would take me so long to beat Colonel Bogey.”

“Your excuses are quite unnecessary.  Mrs. Hastings and I have discovered that we are natural affinities,” said I.

My stenographer, quite at ease, leaned his sticks in a corner and helped himself to a cup of tea and a couple of sandwiches, which in my opinion rivaled my eggs and milk of the early afternoon.  My walk had made me comfortably tired; my lungs were distended with cool country air; my head was clear, and this domestic scene warmed the cockles of my heart.

“How is the Chicopee & Shamrock reorganization coming on?” asked Hastings, striving to be polite by suggesting a congenial subject for conversation.

“I don’t know,” I retorted.  “I’ve forgotten all about it until Monday morning.  On the other hand, how are your children coming on?”

“Sylvia is out gathering chestnuts,” answered Mrs. Hastings, “and Tom is playing football.  They’ll be home directly.  I wonder if you wouldn’t like Jim to show you round our place?”

“Just the thing,” I answered, for I guessed she had household duties to perform.

“Of course you’ll stay to supper?” she pressed me.

I hesitated, though I knew I should stay, all the time.

“Well ­if it really won’t put you out,” I replied.  “I suppose there are evening trains?”

“One every hour.  We’ll get you home by ten o’clock.”

“I’ll have to telephone,” I said, remembering my wife’s regular Saturday-night bridge party.

“That’s easily managed,” said Hastings.  “You can speak to your own house right from my library.”

Again I barefacedly excused myself to my butler on the ground of important business.  As we strolled through the gateway we were met by a sturdy little boy with tousled hair.  He had on an enormous gray sweater and was hugging a pigskin.

“We beat ’em!” he shouted, unabashed by my obviously friendly presence.  “Eighteen to nothing!”

“Tom is twelve,” said Hastings with a shade of pride in his voice.  “Yes, the schools here are good.  I expect to have him ready for college in five years more.”

“What are you going to make of him?” I asked.

“A civil engineer, I think,” he answered.  “You see, I’m a crank on fresh air and building things ­and he seems to be like me.  This cooped-up city life is pretty narrowing, don’t you think?”

“It’s fierce!” I returned heartily, with more warmth than elegance.  “Sometimes I wish I could chuck the whole business and go to farming.”

“Why not?” he asked as we climbed a small rise behind the house.  “Here’s my farm ­fifteen acres.  We raise most of our own truck.”

Below the hill a cornfield, now yellow with pumpkins, stretched to the farther road.  Nearer the house was a kitchen garden, with an apple orchard beyond.  A man in shirtsleeves was milking a cow behind a tiny barn.

“I bought this place three years ago for thirty-nine hundred dollars,” said my stenographer.  “They say it is worth nearer six thousand now.  Anyhow it is worth a hundred thousand to me!”

A little girl, with bulging apron, appeared at the edge of the orchard and came running toward us.

“What have you got there?” called her father.

“Oh, daddy!  Such lovely chestnuts!” cried the child.  “And there are millions more of them!”

“We’ll roast ’em after supper,” said her father.  “Toddle along now and wash up.”

She put up a rosy, beaming face to be kissed and dashed away toward the house.  I tried to remember what either of my two girls had been like at her age, but for some strange reason I could not.

Across the road the fertile countryside sloped away into a distant valley, hemmed in by dim blue hills, below which the sun had already sunk, leaving only a gilded edge behind.  The air was filled with a soft, smoky haze.  A church bell in the village struck six o’clock.

   “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
     The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
   The plowman homeward plods his weary way,”

I murmured.

“For ‘plowman’ read ‘golfer,’” smiled my host.  “By George, though ­it is pretty good to be alive!” The air had turned crisp and we both instinctively took a couple of deep breaths.  “Makes the city look like thirty cents!” he ejaculated.  “Of course it isn’t like New York or Southampton.”

“No, thank God!  It isn’t!” I muttered as we wandered toward the house.

“I hope you don’t mind an early supper,” apologized Mrs. Hastings as we entered; “but Jim gets absolutely ravenous.  You see, on weekdays his lunch is at best a movable feast.”

Our promptly served meal consisted of soup, scrambled eggs and bacon, broiled chops, fried potatoes, peas, salad, apple pie, cheese, grapes plucked fresh from the garden wall, and black coffee, distilled from a shining coffee machine.  Mrs. Hastings brought the things hot from the kitchen and dished them herself.  Tom and Sylvia, carefully spruced up, ate prodigiously and then helped clear away the dishes, while I produced my cigar case.

Then Hastings led me across the hall to a room about twelve feet square, the walls of which were lined with books, where a wood fire was already crackling cozily.  Motioning me to an old leather armchair, he pulled up a wooden rocker before the mantel and, leaning over, laid a regiment of chestnuts before the blazing logs.

I stretched out my legs and took a long pull on one of my Carona-Caronas.  It all seemed too good to be true.  Only six hours before in my marble entrance hall I had listened disgustedly to the cackle of my wife’s luncheon party behind the tapestry of my own dining room.

After all, how easy it was to be happy!  Here was Hastings, jolly as a clam and living like a prince on ­what?  I wondered.

“Hastings,” I said, “do you mind telling me how much it costs you to live like this?”

“Not at all,” he replied ­“though I never figured it out exactly.  Let’s see.  Five per cent on the cost of the place ­say, two hundred dollars.  Repairs and insurance a hundred.  That’s three hundred, isn’t it?  We pay the hired man thirty-five dollars and Carmen eighteen dollars a month, and give ’em their board ­about six hundred and fifty more.  So far nine hundred and fifty.  Our vegetables and milk cost us practically nothing ­meat and groceries about seventy-five a month ­nine hundred a year.

“We have one horse; but in good weather I use my bicycle to go to the station.  We cut our own ice in the pond back of the orchard.  The schools are free.  I cut quite a lot of wood myself, but my coal comes high ­must cost me at least a hundred and fifty a year.  I don’t have many doctors’ bills, living out here; but the dentist hits us for about twenty-five dollars every six months ­that’s fifty more.  My wife spends about three hundred and the children as much more.  Of course that’s fairly liberal.  One doesn’t need ballgowns in our village.

“My own expenses are, railroad fare, lunches, tobacco ­I smoke a pipe mostly ­and clothes ­probably about five hundred in all.  We go on a big bat once a month and dine at a table-d’hote restaurant, and take in the opera or the play.  That costs some ­about ten dollars a clip ­say, eighty for the season; and, of course, I blow the kids to a camping trip every summer, which sets me back a good hundred and fifty.  How does that come out?”

I had jotted the items down, as he went along, on the back of an envelope.

“Thirty-three hundred and eighty dollars,” I said, adding them up.

“It seems a good deal,” he commented, turning and gazing into the fire; “but I have usually managed to lay up about fifteen hundred every year ­besides, of course, the little I give away.”

I sat stunned.  Thirty-three hundred dollars! ­I spent seventy-two thousand! ­and the man lived as well as I did!  What did I have that he had not?  But Hastings was saying something, still with his back toward me.

“I suppose you thought I must be an ungrateful dog not to jump at the offer you made me this morning,” he remarked in an embarrassed manner.  “It’s worried me a lot all day.  I’m really tremendously gratified at your kindness.  I couldn’t very well explain myself, and I don’t know what possessed me to say what I did about my not being willing to exchange places with you.  But, you see, I’m over forty.  That makes a heap of difference.  I’m as good a stenographer as you can find, and so long as my health holds out I can be sure of at least fifty dollars a week, besides what I earn outside.

“I’ve never had any kink for the law.  I don’t think I’d be a success at it; and frankly, saving your presence, I don’t like it.  A lot of it is easy money and a lot of it is money earned in the meanest way there is ­playing dirty tricks; putting in the wrong a fellow that’s really right; aggravating misunderstandings and profiting by the quarrels people get into.  You’re a high-class, honorable man, and you don’t see the things I see.”  I winced.  If he only knew, I had seen a good deal!  “But I go round among the other law offices, and I tell you it’s a demoralizing profession.

“It’s all right to reorganize a railroad; but in general litigation it seems to me as if the lawyers spend most of their time trying to make the judge and jury believe the witnesses are all criminals.  Everything a man says on the stand or has ever done in his life is made the subject of a false inference ­an innuendo.  The law isn’t constructive ­it’s destructive; and that’s why I want my boy to be a civil engineer.”

He paused, abashed at his own heat.

“Well,” I interjected, “it’s a harsh arraignment; but there’s a great deal of truth in what you say.  Wouldn’t you like to make big money?”

“Big money!  I do make big money ­for a man of my class,” he replied with a gentle smile.  “I wouldn’t know what to do with much more.  I’ve got health and a comfortable home, the affection of an honest woman and two fine children.  I work hard, sleep like a log, and get a couple of sets of tennis or a round of golf on Saturdays and Sundays.  I have the satisfaction of knowing I give you your money’s worth for the salary you pay me.  My kids have as good teachers as there are anywhere.  We see plenty of people and I belong to a club or two.  I bear a good reputation in the town and try to keep things going in the right direction.  We have all the books and magazines we want to read.  What’s more, I don’t worry about trying to be something I’m not.”

“How do you mean?” I asked, feeling that his talk was money in my moral pocket.

“Oh, I’ve seen a heap of misery in New York due to just wanting to get ahead ­I don’t know where; fellows that are just crazy to make ’big money’ as you call it, in order to ride in motors and get into some sort of society.  All the clerks, office boys and stenographers seem to want to become stockbrokers.  Personally I don’t see what there is in it for them.  I don’t figure out that my boy would be any happier with two million dollars than without.  If he had it he would be worrying all the time for fear he wasn’t getting enough fun for his money.  And as for my girl I want her to learn to do something!  I want her to have the discipline that comes from knowing how to earn her own living.  Of course that’s one of the greatest satisfactions there is in life anyway ­doing some one thing as well as it can be done.”

“Wouldn’t you like your daughter to marry?” I demanded.

“Certainly ­if she can find a clean man who wants her.  Why, it goes without saying, that is life’s greatest happiness ­that and having children.”

“Certainly!” I echoed with an inward qualm.

“Suppose she doesn’t marry though?  That’s the point.  She doesn’t want to hang round a boarding house all her life when everybody is busy doing interesting things.  I’ve got a theory that the reason rich people ­especially rich women ­get bored is because they don’t know anything about real life.  Put one of ’em in a law office, hitting a typewriter at fifteen dollars a week, and in a month she’d wake up to what was really going on ­she’d be alive!”

   “’The world is so full of a number of things
   I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings!’”

said I.  “What’s Sylvia going to do?”

“Oh, she’s quite a clever little artist.”  He handed me some charming sketches in pencil that were lying on the table.  “I think she may make an illustrator.  Heaven knows we need ’em!  I’ll give her a course at Pratt Institute and then at the Academy of Design; and after that, if they think she is good enough, I’ll send her to Paris.”

“I wish I’d done the same thing with my girls!” I sighed.  “But the trouble is ­the trouble is ­You see, if I had they wouldn’t have been doing what their friends were doing.  They’d have been out of it.”

“No; they wouldn’t like that, of course,” agreed Hastings respectfully.  “They would want to be ‘in it’”

I looked at him quickly to see whether his remark had a double entendre.

“I don’t see very much of my daughters,” I continued.  “They’ve got away from me somehow.”

“That’s the tough part of it,” he said thoughtfully.  “I suppose rich people are so busy with all the things they have to do that they haven’t much time for fooling round with their children.  I have a good time with mine though.  They’re too young to get away anyhow.  We read French history aloud every evening after supper.  Sylvia is almost an expert on the Duke of Guise and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.”

We smoked silently for some moments.  Hastings’ ideas interested me, but I felt that he could give me something more personal ­of more value to myself.  The fellow was really a philosopher in his quiet way.

“After all, you haven’t told me what you meant by saying you wouldn’t change places with me,” I said abruptly.  “What did you mean by that?  I want to know.”

“I wish you would forget I ever said it, sir,” he murmured.

“No,” I retorted, “I can’t forget it.  You needn’t spare me.  This talk is not ex cathedra ­it’s just between ourselves.  When you’ve told me why, then I will forget it.  This is man to man.”

“Well,” he answered slowly, “it would take me a long time to put it in just the right way.  There was nothing personal in what I said this morning.  I was thinking about conditions in general ­the whole thing.  It can’t go on!”

“What can’t go on?”

“The terrible burden of money,” he said.

“Terrible burden of money!” I repeated.  What did he mean?

“The weight of it ­that’s bowing people down and choking them up.  It’s like a ball and chain.  I meant I wouldn’t change places with any man in the millionaire class ­I couldn’t stand the complexities and responsibilities.  I believe the time is coming when no citizen will be permitted to receive an income from his inherited or accumulated possessions greater than is good for him.  You may say that’s the wildest sort of socialism.  Perhaps it is.  But it’s socialism looked at from a different angle from the platform orators ­the angle of the individual.

“I don’t believe a man’s money should be taken away from him and distributed round for the sake of other people ­but for the protection of the man himself.  There’s got to be a pecuniary safety valve.  Every dollar over a certain amount, just like every extra pound of steam in a boiler, is a thing of danger.  We want health in the individual and in the state ­not disease.

“Let the amount of a man’s income be five, ten, fifteen or twenty thousand dollars ­the exact figure doesn’t matter; but there is a limit at which wealth becomes a drag and a detriment instead of a benefit!  I’d base the legality of a confiscatory income tax on the constitutionality of any health regulation or police ordinance.  People shouldn’t be permitted to injure themselves ­or have poison lying round.  Certainly it’s a lesson that history teaches on every page.

“Besides everybody needs something to work for ­to keep him fit ­at least that’s the way it looks to me.  Nations ­let alone mere individuals ­have simply gone to seed, died of dry rot because they no longer had any stimulus.  A fellow has got to have some idea in the back of his head as to what he’s after ­and the harder it is for him to get it, the better, as a rule, it is for him.  Good luck is the worst enemy a heap of people have.  Misfortune spurs a man on, tries him out and develops him ­makes him more human.”

“Ever played in hard luck?” I queried.

“I?  Sure, I have,” answered Hastings cheerfully.  “And I wouldn’t worry much if it came my way again.  I could manage to get along pretty comfortably on less than half I’ve got.  I like my home; but we could be happy anywhere so long as we had ourselves and our health and a few books.  However, I wasn’t thinking of myself.  I’ve got a friend in the brokering business who says it’s the millionaires that do most of the worrying anyhow.  Naturally a man with a pile of money has to look after it; but what puzzles me is why anybody should want it in the first place.”

He searched along a well-filled and disordered shelf of shabby books.

“Here’s what William James says about it: 

“’We have grown literally afraid to be poor.  We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life.  We have lost the power of even imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant ­the liberation from material attachments; the unbribed soul; the manlier indifference; the paying our way by what we are or do, and not by what we have; the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly ­the more athletic trim, in short the moral fighting shape....  It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated class is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.’”

“I guess he’s about right,” I agreed.

“That’s my idea exactly,” answered Hastings.  “As I look at it the curse of most of the people living on Fifth Avenue is that they’re perfectly safe.  You could take away nine-tenths of what they’ve got and they’d still have about a hundred times more money than they needed to be comfortable.  They’re like a whole lot of fat animals in an inclosure ­they’re fed three or four times a day, but the wire fence that protects them from harm deprives them of any real liberty.  Or they’re like goldfish swimming round and round in a big bowl.  They can look through sort of dimly; but they can’t get out!  If they really knew, they’d trade their security for their freedom any time.

“Perfect safety isn’t an unmixed blessing by any means.  Look at the photographs of the wild Indians ­the ones that carried their lives in their hands every minute ­and there’s something stern and noble about their faces.  Put an Indian on a reservation and he takes to drinking whisky.  It was the same way with the chaps that lived in the Middle Ages and had to wear shirts of chainmail.  It kept ’em guessing.  That’s merely one phase of it.

“The real thing to put the bite into life is having a Cause.  People forget how to make sacrifices ­or become afraid to.  After all, even dying isn’t such a tremendous trick.  Plenty of people have done it just for an idea ­wanted to pray in their own way.  But this modern way of living takes all the sap out of folks.  They get an entirely false impression of the relative values of things.  It takes a failure or a death in the family to wake them up to the comparative triviality of the worth of money as compared, for instance, to human affection ­any of the real things of life.

“I don’t object to inequality of mere wealth in itself, because I wouldn’t dignify money to that extent.  Of course I do object to a situation where the rich man can buy life and health for his sick child and the poor man can’t.  Too many sick babies!  That’ll be attended to, all right, in time.  I wouldn’t take away one man’s money for the sake of giving it to others ­not a bit of it.  But what I would do would be to put it out of a man’s power to poison himself with money.

“Suicide is made a crime under the law.  How about moral and intellectual suicide?  It ought to be prevented for the sake of the state.  No citizen should be allowed to stultify himself with luxury any more than he should be permitted to cut off his right hand.  Excuse me for being didactic ­but you said you’d like to get my point of view and I’ve tried to give it to you in a disjointed sort of way.  I’d sooner my son would have to work for his living than not, and I’d rather he’d spend his life contending with the forces of nature and developing the country than in quarreling over the division of profits that other men had earned.”

I had listened attentively to what Hastings had to say; and, though I did not agree with all of it, I was forced to admit the truth of a large part.  He certainly seemed to have come nearer to solving the problem than I had even been able to.  Yet it appeared to my conservative mind shockingly socialistic and chimerical.

“So you really think,” I retorted, “that the state ought to pass laws which should prevent the accumulation ­or at least the retention ­of large fortunes?”

Hastings smiled apologetically.

“Well,” he answered, “I don’t know just how far I should advocate active governmental interference, though it’s a serious question.  You’re a thousand times better qualified to express an opinion on that than I am.

“When I spoke about health and police regulations I was talking metaphorically.  I suppose my real idea is that the moral force of the community ­public opinion ­ought to be strong enough to compel a man to live so that such laws would be unnecessary.  His own public spirit, his conscience, or whatever you call it, should influence him to use whatever he has above a certain amount for the common good ­to turn it back where he got it, or somebody else got it, instead of demoralizing the whole country and setting an example of waste and extravagance.  That kind of thing does an awful lot of harm.  I see it all round me.  But, of course, the worst sufferer is the man himself, and his own good sense ought to jack him up.

“Still you can’t force people to keep healthy.  If a man is bound to sacrifice everything for money and make himself sick with it, perhaps he ought to be prevented.”

“Jim!” cried Mrs. Hastings, coming in with a pitcher of cider and some glasses.  “I could hear you talking all the way out in the kitchen.  I’m sure you’ve bored our guest to death.  Why, the chestnuts are burned to a crisp!”

“He hasn’t bored me a bit,” I answered; “in fact we are agreed on a great many things.  However, after I’ve had a glass of that cider I must start back to town.”

“We’d love to have you spend the night,” she urged.  “We’ve a nice little guestroom over the library.”

The invitation was tempting, but I wanted to get away and think.  Also it was my duty to look in on the bridge party before it became too sleepy to recognize my presence.  I drank my cider, bade my hostess good night and walked to the station with Hastings.  As we crossed the square to the train he said: 

“It was mighty good of you to come out here to see us and we both appreciate it.  Hope you’ll forgive my bluntness this morning and for shooting off my mouth so much this evening.”

“My dear fellow,” I returned, “that was what I came out for.  You’ve given me something to think about.  I’m thinking already.  You’re quite right.  You’d be a fool to change places with anybody ­let alone a miserable millionaire.”

In the smoker of the accommodation, to which I retired, I sat oblivious of my surroundings until we entered the tunnel.  So far as I could see, Hastings had it on me at every turn ­at thirty-three hundred a year ­considerably less than half of what I paid out annually in servants’ wages.  And the exasperating part of it all was that, though I spent seventy-two thousand a year, I did not begin to be as happy as he was!  Not by a jugful.  Face to face with the simple comfort of the cottage I had just left, its sincerity and affection, its thrifty self-respect, its wide interests, I confessed that I had not been myself genuinely contented since I left my mother’s house for college, thirty odd years before.  I had become the willing victim of a materialistic society.

I had squandered my life in a vain effort to purchase happiness with money ­an utter impossibility, as I now only too plainly saw.  I was poisoned with it, as Hastings had said ­sick with it and sick of it.  I was one of Hastings’ chaingangs of prosperous prisoners ­millionaires shackled together and walking in lockstep; one of his school of goldfish bumping their noses against the glass of the bowl in which they were confined by virtue of their inability to live outside the medium to which they were accustomed.

I was through with it!  From that moment I resolved to become a free man; living my own life; finding happiness in things that were worth while.  I would chuck the whole nauseating business of valets and scented baths; of cocktails, clubs and cards; of an unwieldy and tiresome household of lazy servants; of the ennui of heavy dinners; and of a family the members of which were strangers to each other.  I could and would easily cut down my expenditures to not more than thirty thousand a year; and with the balance of my income I would look after some of those sick babies Hastings had mentioned.

I would begin by taking a much smaller house and letting half the servants go, including my French cook.  I had for a long time realized that we all ate too much.  I would give up one of my motors and entertain more simply.  We would omit the spring dash to Paris, and I would insist on a certain number of evenings each week which the family should spend together, reading aloud or talking over their various plans and interests.  It did not seem by any means impossible in the prospect and I got a considerable amount of satisfaction from planning it all out.  My life was to be that of a sort of glorified Hastings.  After my healthy, peaceful day in the quiet country I felt quite light-hearted ­as nearly happy as I could remember having been for years.

It was raining when I got out at the Grand Central Station, and as I hurried along the platform to get a taxi I overtook an acquaintance of mine ­a social climber.  He gave me a queer look in response to my greeting and I remembered that I had on the old gray hat I had taken from the quick lunch.

“I’ve been off for a tramp in the country,” I explained, resenting my own instinctive embarrassment.

“Ah!  Don’t say!  Didn’t know you went in for that sort of thing!  Well, good night!”

He sprang into the only remaining taxi without asking me to share it and vanished in a cloud of gasoline smoke.  I was in no mood for waiting; besides I was going to be democratic.  I took a surface car up Lexington Avenue and stood between the distended knees of a fat and somnolent Italian gentleman for thirty blocks.  The car was intolerably stuffy and smelled strongly of wet umbrellas and garlic.  By the time I reached the cross-street on which I lived it had begun to pour.  I turned up my coat collar and ran to my house.

Somehow I felt like a small boy as I threw myself panting inside my own marble portal.  My butler expressed great sympathy for my condition and smuggled me quickly upstairs.  I fancy he suspected there was something discreditable about my absence.  A pungent aroma floated up from the drawing room, where the bridge players were steadily at work.  I confess to feeling rather dirty, wet and disreputable.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said my butler as he turned on the electric switch in my bedroom, “but I didn’t expect you back this evening, and so I told Martin he might go out.”

A wave of irritation, almost of anger, swept over me.  Martin was my perfect valet.

“What the devil did you do that for!” I snapped.

Then, realizing my inconsistency, I was ashamed, utterly humiliated and disgusted with myself.  This, then, was all that my resolution amounted to after all!

“I am very sorry, sir,” repeated my butler.  “Very sorry, sir, indeed.  Shall I help you off with your things?”

“Oh, that’s all right!” I exclaimed, somewhat to his surprise.  “Don’t bother about me.  I’ll take care of myself.”

“Can’t I bring you something?” he asked solicitously.

“No, thanks!” said I.  “I don’t need anything that you can give me!”

“Very good, sir,” he replied.  “Good night, sir.”

“Good night,” I answered, and he closed the door noiselessly.

I lit a cigarette and, tossing off my coat, sank into a chair.  My mere return to that ordered elegance seemed to have benumbed my individuality.  Downstairs thirty of our most intimate friends were amusing themselves at the cardtables, confident that at eleven-thirty they would be served with supper consisting of salads, ice-cream and champagne.  They would not hope in vain.  If they did not get it ­speaking broadly ­they would not come again.  They wanted us as we were ­house, food, trappings ­the whole layout.  They meant well enough.  They simply had to have certain things.  If we changed our scale of living we should lose the acquaintance of these people, and we should have nobody in their place.

We had grown into a highly complicated system, in which we had a settled orbit.  This orbit was not susceptible of change unless we were willing to turn everything topsy-turvy.  Everybody would suppose we had lost our money.  And, not being brilliant or clever people, who paid their way as they went by making themselves lively and attractive, it would be assumed that we could not keep up our end; so we should be gradually left out.

I said to myself that I ought not to care ­that being left out was what I wanted; but, all the same, I knew I did care.  You cannot tear yourself up by the roots at fifty unless you are prepared to go to a far country.  I was not prepared to do that at a moment’s notice.  I, too, was used to a whole lot of things ­was solidly imbedded in them.

My very house was an overwhelming incubus.  I was like a miserable snail, forever lugging my house round on my back ­unable to shake it off.  A change in our mode of life would not necessarily in itself bring my children any nearer to me; it would, on the contrary, probably antagonize them.  I had sowed the seed and I was reaping the harvest.  My professional life I could not alter.  I had my private clients ­my regular business.  Besides there was no reason for altering it.  I conducted it honorably and well enough.

Yet the calm consideration of those very difficulties in the end only demonstrated the clearer to me the perilous state in which I was.  The deeper the bog, the more my spirit writhed to be free.  Better, I thought, to die struggling than gradually to sink down and be suffocated beneath the mire of apathy and self-indulgence.

Hastings’ little home ­or something ­had wrought a change in me.  I had gone through some sort of genuine emotional experience.  It seemed impossible to reform my mode of life and thought, but it was equally incredible that I should fall back into my old indifference.  Sitting there alone in my chamber I felt like a man in a nightmare, who would give his all to be able to rise, yet whose limbs were immovable, held by some subtle and cruel power.  I had read in novels about men agonized by remorse and indecision.  I now experienced those sensations myself.  I discovered they were not imaginary states.

My meditations were interrupted by the entrance of my wife, who, with an anxious look on her face, inquired what was the matter.  The butler had said I seemed indisposed; so she had slipped away from our guests and come up to see for herself.  She was in full regalia ­elaborate gown, pearls, aigret.

“There’s nothing the matter with me,” I answered, though I know full well I lied ­I was poisoned.

“Well, that’s a comfort, at any rate!” she replied, amiably enough.

“Where’s Tom?” I asked wearily.

“I haven’t any idea,” she said frankly.  “You know he almost never comes home.”

“And the girls?”

“Visiting the Devereuxs at Staatsburg,” she answered.  “Aren’t you coming down for some bridge?”

“No,” I said.  “To tell you the truth I never want to see a pack of cards again.  I want to cut the game.  I’m sick of our life and the useless extravagance.  I want a change.  Let’s get rid of the whole thing ­take a smaller house ­have fewer servants.  Think of the relief!”

“What’s the matter?” she cried sharply.  “Have you lost money?”

Money!  Money!

“No,” I said, “I haven’t lost money ­I’ve lost heart!”

She eyed me distrustfully.

“Are you crazy?” she demanded.

“No,” I answered.  “I don’t think I am.”

“You act that way,” she retorted.  “It’s a funny time to talk about changing your mode of life ­right in the middle of a bridge party!  What have you been working for all these years?  And where do I come in?  You can go to your clubs and your office ­anywhere; but all I’ve got is the life you have taught me to enjoy!  Tom is grown up and never comes near me.  And the girls ­why, what do you think would happen to them if you suddenly gave up your place in society?  They’d never get married so long as they lived.  People would think you’d gone bankrupt!  Really” ­her eyes filled and she dabbed at them with a Valenciennes handkerchief ­“I think it too heartless of you to come in this way ­like a skeleton at the feast ­and spoil my evening!”

I felt a slight touch of remorse.  I had broached the matter rather roughly.  I laid my hand on her shoulder ­now so round and matronly, once so slender.

“Anna,” I said as tenderly as I could, “suppose I did give it all up?”

She rose indignantly to her feet and shook off my hand.

“You’d have to get along without me!” she retorted; then, seeing the anguish on my face, she added less harshly:  “Take a brandy-and-soda and go to bed.  I’m sure you’re not quite yourself.”

I was struck by the chance significance of her phrase ­“Not quite yourself.”  No; ever since I had left the house that morning I had not been quite myself.  I had had a momentary glimpse ­had for an instant caught the glint of an angel’s wing ­but it was gone.  I was almost myself ­my old self; yet not quite.

“I didn’t mean to be unkind,” I muttered.  “Don’t worry about me.  I’ve merely had a vision of what might have been, and it’s disgusted me.  Go on down to the bridge fiends.  I’ll be along shortly ­if you’ll excuse my clothes.”

“Poor boy!” she sighed.  “You’re tired out!  No; don’t come down ­in those clothes!”

I laughed a hollow laugh when she had gone.  Really there was something humorous about it all.  What was the use even of trying?  I did not seem even to belong in my own house unless my clothes matched the wall paper!  I lit cigarette after cigarette, staring blankly at my silk pajamas laid out on the bed.

I could not change things!  It was too late.  I had brought up my son and daughters to live in a certain kind of way, had taught them that luxuries were necessities, had neglected them ­had ruined them perhaps; but I had no moral right now to annihilate that life ­and their mother’s ­without their consent.  They might be poor things; but, after all, they were my own.  They were free, white and twenty-one.  And I knew they would simply think me mad!

I had a fixed place in a complicated system, with responsibilities and duties I was morally bound to recognize.  I could not chuck the whole business without doing a great deal of harm.  My life was not so simple as all that.  Any change ­if it could be accomplished at all ­would have to be a gradual one and be brought about largely by persuasion.  Could it be accomplished?

It now seemed insuperably difficult.  I was bound to the wheel ­and the habits of a lifetime, the moral pressure of my wife and children, the example of society, and the force of superficial public opinion and expectation were spinning it round and round in the direction of least resistance.  As well attempt to alter my course as to steer a locomotive off the track!  I could not ditch the locomotive, for I had a trainload of passengers!  And yet ­

I groaned and buried my face in my hands.  I ­successful?  Yes, success had been mine; but success was failure ­naught else ­failure, absolute and unmitigated!  I had lost my wife and family, and my home had become the resort of a crew of empty-headed coxcombs.

I wondered whether they were gone.  I looked at the clock.  It was half-past twelve ­Sunday morning.  I opened my bedroom door and crept downstairs.  No; they were not gone ­they had merely moved on to supper.

My library was in the front of the house, across the hall from the drawing room, and I went in there and sank into an armchair by the fire.  The bridge party was making a great to-do and its strident laughter floated up from below.  By contrast the quiet library seemed a haven of refuge.  Here were the books I might have read ­which might have been my friends.  Poor fool that I was!

I put out my hand and took down the first it encountered ­John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.  It was a funny old volume ­a priceless early edition given me by a grateful client whom I had extricated from some embarrassment.  I had never read it, but I knew its general trend.  It was about some imaginary miserable who, like myself, wanted to do things differently.  I took a cigar out of my pocket, lit it and, opening the book haphazard, glanced over the pages in a desultory fashion.

“That is that which I seek for, even to be rid of this heavy Burden; but get it off myself, I cannot; nor is there any man in our country that can take it off my shoulders ­”

So the Pilgrim had a burden too!  I turned back to the beginning and read how Christian, the hero, had been made aware of his perilous condition.

“In this plight therefore he went home, and refrained himself as long as he could, that his Wife and Children should not perceive his distress, but he could not be silent long, because that his trouble increased:  Wherefore at length he brake his mind to his Wife and Children; and thus he began to talk to them:  ‘Oh, my dear Wife,’ said he, ’and you the Children of my bowels, I, your dear Friend, am in myself undone by reason of a Burden that lieth hard upon me.’ ...  At this his Relations were sore amazed; not for that they believed that what he had said to them was true, but because they thought that some frenzy distemper had got into his head; therefore, it drawing toward night, and they hoping that sleep might settle his brains, with all haste they got him to bed:  But the night was as troublesome to him as the day; wherefore, instead of sleeping, he spent it in sighs and tears.”

Surely this Pilgrim was strangely like myself!  And, though sorely beset, he had struggled on his way.

“Hast thou a Wife and Children?

“Yes, but I am so laden with this Burden that I cannot take that pleasure in them as formerly; methinks I am as if I had none.”

Tears filled my eyes and I laid down the book.  The bridge party was going home.  I could hear them shouting good-bys in the front hall and my wife’s shrill voice answering Good night!  From outside came the toot of horns and the whir of the motors as they drew up at the curb.  One by one the doors slammed, the glass rattled and they thundered off.  The noise got on my nerves and, taking my book, I crossed to the deserted drawing room, the scene of the night’s social carnage.  The sight was enough to sicken any man!  Eight tables covered with half-filled glasses; cards everywhere ­the floor littered with them; chairs pushed helter-skelter and one overturned; and from a dozen ash-receivers the slowly ascending columns of incense to the great God of Chance.  On the middle table lay a score card and pencil, a roll of bills, a pile of silver, and my wife’s vanity box, with its chain of pearls and diamonds.

Fiercely I resolved again to end it all ­at any cost.  I threw open one of the windows, sat myself down by a lamp in a corner, and found the place where I had been reading.  Christian had just encountered Charity.  In the midst of their discussion I heard my wife’s footsteps in the hall; the portieres rustled and she entered.

“Well!” she exclaimed.  “I thought you had gone to bed long ago.  I had good luck to-night.  I won eight hundred dollars!  How are you feeling?”

“Anna,” I answered, “sit down a minute.  I want to read you something.”

“Go ahead!” she said, lighting a cigarette, and throwing herself into one of the vacant chairs.

“Then said Charity to Christian:  Have you a family?  Are you a married man?”

“CHRISTIAN:  I have a Wife and ... Children.”

“CHARITY:  And why did you not bring them along with you?”

“Then Christian wept and said:  Oh, how willingly would I have done it, but they were all of them utterly averse to my going on Pilgrimage.”

“CHARITY:  But you should have talked to them, and have endeavored to have shown them the danger of being behind.

“CHRISTIAN:  So I did, and told them also what God had shewed to me of the destruction of our City; but I seemed to them as one that mocked, and they believed me not.

“CHARITY:  And did you pray to God that He would bless your counsel to them?

“CHRISTIAN:  Yes, and that with much affection; for you must think that my Wife and poor Children were very dear unto me.

“CHARITY:  But did you tell them of your own sorrow and fear of destruction? ­for I suppose that destruction was visible enough to you.

“CHRISTIAN:  Yes, over and over, and over.  They might also see my fears in my countenance, in my tears, and also in my trembling under the apprehension of the Judgment that did hang over our heads; but all was not sufficient to prevail with them to come with me.

“CHARITY:  But what could they say for themselves, why they come not?

“CHRISTIAN:  Why, my Wife was afraid of losing this World, and my Children were given to the foolish Delights of youth; so, what by one thing and what by another, they left me to wander in this manner alone.”

An unusual sound made me look up.  My wife was weeping, her head on her arms among the money and debris of the card-table.

“I ­I didn’t know,” she said in a choked, half-stifled voice, “that you really meant what you said upstairs.”

“I mean it as I never have meant anything since I told you that I loved you, dear,” I answered gently.

She raised her face, wet with tears.

“That was such a long time ago!” she sobbed.  “And I thought that all this was what you wanted.”  She glanced round the room.

“I did ­once,” I replied; “but I don’t want it any longer.  We can’t live our lives over again; but” ­and I went over to her ­“we can try to do a little better from now on.”

She laid her head on my arm and took my hand in hers.

“What shall we do?” she asked.

“We must free ourselves from our Burden,” said I; “break down the wall of money that shuts us in from other people, and try to pay our way in the world by what we are and do rather than by what we have.  It may be hard at first; but it’s worth while ­for all of us.”

She disengaged one hand and wiped her eyes.

“I’ll help all I can,” she whispered.

“That’s what I want!” cried I, and my heart leaped.

Again I saw the glint of the angel’s wing!