at nine the next morning stacey drove down town with his father. perhaps no real intimacy was possible between them, since they had hardly a thought or a belief in common, but they were, simply through a heightened mutual friendliness, closer together than they had been for six years. stacey went up to his father’s pleasant office and watched mr. carroll sit down in his swivel-chair, light a cigar, and open his letters with a paper-knife.

stacey smiled. “i’ve sometimes wondered, sir,” he said, “why at sixty or thereabouts you—”

“here! here! stop it!” mr. carroll interrupted ruefully.

“well, anyway i’ve wondered why you didn’t retire and just amuse yourself, since you’ve certainly earned a rest. but—”

“retire? nonsense! work,—that’s all a man’s good for. got to stay in harness. soon as he gets out of it he goes to pieces.”

“h’m,” said stacey banteringly, “that’s the theory, of course. but just look around you. here you come down to a bright jolly office entirely cut off from the home, and open nice crisp new letters, and call in—presently, when i stop bothering you—a fresh clean stenographer, and you watch the blue smoke of a good cigar curl up across the sunlight—no, sir, you can’t fool me with any talk about duty and the rest. poetry! sheer poetry! men’s ingenuous little romance!”

mr. carroll leaned back in his chair and laughed.

“american business men,—why they’re our real leisure class!” stacey concluded.

but at this his father protested. “i worked ten hours a day and sometimes twelve—hard—from the time i was eighteen till past forty,” he observed soberly.

“i know you did, sir,” stacey assented respectfully. “i’m not talking about that epoch but about our own. the young business men i know—and i don’t mean the clerks, people working on a salary, but the men who will be rich one day from business—how about them? they get down to their offices anywhere from nine-thirty to ten, and they waste a good half-hour before they begin to work, and they play a lot even when they think they’re working; then they take an hour and a half off at the club for lunch; at four or thereabouts, weather permitting, they motor out to the country-club and play nine holes of golf; then they go back to a nice, different, clean house, with all the housekeeping tended to by their pretty wives. oh, it’s a hard life!”

“you’re right,” the older man growled. “it’s a damned lazy life, and i don’t know what the country’s coming to if it keeps on.”

“now really,” stacey suggested, “can you blame a laboring man if he kicks?”

but at this mr. carroll’s mouth shut in a tight line. “i’m against loafing anywhere in any class,” he said sternly. “the laborer’s got his job and he loafs on it; the young business man has his and he loafs. i disapprove of both.”

“yes,” stacey returned mildly, “but the results are so disproportionate. the young business idler has a far more luxurious time than the most conscientious laborer could have.”

but on a point like this mr. carroll would never yield an inch. “labor is getting a bigger reward for less work than it ever got before,” he said. then he changed the subject. “you know, son,” he remarked, with a sudden smile, “to see you sitting there brings back so many things. i can’t get over the feeling that you’re a boy, as you used to be, and have come up and made yourself agreeable in preparation to touching me for money. you don’t need money, do you?” he asked wistfully.

“goodness, no!” said stacey, who had just ten dollars to last the rest of the month. he would have liked to oblige his father, but he really couldn’t, in this. he got up to go, and mr. carroll touched the button that would summon his stenographer.

“i’ll run along now and leave you in peace,” stacey observed. “i’m going down to see if parkins will give me a job.”

at this mr. carroll lifted his head quickly and gave him a sharp look. “just a minute, ruth,” he said to the young woman who had opened the door. “i’ll ring for you again presently.” she went out.

mr. carroll gazed at his son with interest. “going back to work, eh?”

“yes.”

“look here!” said the older man sharply. “how would you like a job with me? lots of big things you could work into.”

stacey hesitated. he would have done a great deal to please his father. but after a moment he shook his head.

“no, sir,” he replied reluctantly. “i’d like it; honestly i would. it would be a fascinating new game. but architecture is the one thing i know about. you gave me years of study in it. i’d better stick to it.”

his father nodded. “right!” he said. “i can see that.”

a few minutes later stacey opened the door of mr. parkins’s private office. “hello!” he remarked. “can i come in?”

“well, stacey!” cried the architect cordially. “how are you?”

“first-rate. got a job for me?”

mr. parkins stared at him with a humorous smile. “now what have you gone and done—reformed?”

stacey laughed. “not so far as i know,” he said lightly.

“then you must have acquired grace.”

stacey waved the suggestion aside deprecatingly. “no,” he said, “but i’ll tell you the truth. i’ve worried my head too long about the problems of the universe. everybody’s doing it. a mistake. work’s all there is for a man—not as a drug, but just because it’s the only thing he knows about and can take hold of.” and stacey had not equivocated. as far as it went this did seem truth to him—just a fragment of the truth. “how about that job?” he added.

“sure! glad to have you. we need you badly. hadn’t found any one to replace poor phil blair. my offer’s still open.”

“no,” said stacey, suddenly grave at the mention of phil, “take me on for a couple of months at the old salary. then if i’m any good you can repeat your offer if you want to. i may have forgotten everything i knew. tell me,” he added, suddenly feeling all this as of very little importance, “how did phil do? tell me about phil.”

“the most lovable chap i’ve ever known,” said mr. parkins soberly, “and he worked very hard—too hard. i could have cried when i heard he was dead. but he wasn’t the best man for the place. you would have been better. odd, that power in any one so frail! i felt as though i were hiring bramante to design bath-tubs.”

stacey nodded.

the architect smiled suddenly. “i didn’t mean what i said to sound uncomplimentary to you,” he added.

“oh,” said stacey impatiently, “i never thought of that. i’ll be down ready to work at nine to-morrow morning. good-bye.” and he left the office abruptly.

when he was again on the street he hesitated for a moment, then set off on foot for his sister’s house, two miles distant. but the mention of phil’s name had thrown him into so deep a preoccupation that he walked mechanically, hardly aware of his surroundings, and did not even notice the greetings people waved at him from passing motor cars. he had neglected phil for chimaeras, he mused sadly. when you thought about life as a whole it was horrible—and dead—a cold motionless monster that froze your veins. real life, good or bad, wretched or happy, but warm, was in personal relationships—and nowhere else. he had let veil after gray veil of bleak abstractions descend between himself and phil, obscuring this warmest and freshest of realities. and now phil was dead. so stacey meditated, but without bitterness; for there was a kind of fatalism upon him. whatever was, was. well, there was still catherine. perhaps he could make it up to her a little.

but when at last he mounted the steps of his sister’s house his melancholy fled; for he was genuinely eager to see julie and was glad when the maid told him she was at home—out in the garden behind the house, he learned, and made haste to join her.

“well, stace!” she cried joyfully at sight of him, and threw her arms around him in a warm hug, taking care to keep her gloved hands, which were muddy with weeding, from touching his coat, and laughing because of doing so. “i am glad to see you! i only heard this morning. if i’d known last night we’d have been around to the house. why didn’t you call me up? how fit you’re looking!” and she drew away to gaze at him, while he dropped down upon a bench and looked back, smiling, at her.

she was plump and sweet-natured, stacey thought, and in the bright may sunlight her complexion showed, undamaged, that clear healthy freshness which can be retained only by decent living. he was glad to be with her.

“jimmy and junior both well?” he asked.

“splendid! jimmy’s getting rather fat, and i—well, you see! so we’re both dieting. we sit with a book propped up in front of us and count the calories in everything.” she laughed and sat down beside her brother.

“too much happiness,” said stacey. “not enough conflict. you and jimmy ought to fight more.”

he was wondering about his sister. could it really be that she encountered no problems at all? there was a sweetness and a sureness about her that made him doubt such an obvious hypothesis.

“i’ll stay to lunch, jule, if you’ll ask me,” he began, “because—”

“of course i will! how nice!” she interrupted.

“—because it will be my only chance for a while. i’m going back to work with parkins to-morrow.”

“oh, i’m glad!” she exclaimed.

“are you? why?”

she looked at him rather shyly, frowning a little. “because,” she said after just an instant, “you have so fine a training it seems a shame to waste it and let houses be built more clumsily by people who haven’t had it.”

stacey felt grateful for her reply. she might have said: “because i think you’ll be happier,” or: “because i think every man ought to do something.” she had their father’s direct way of going straight to the heart of a question, and she was so simple about it that she got no credit for intelligence. what she said always sounded usual.

she went on with her weeding now, and they talked cordially of superficial things.

junior, back from kindergarten, made himself the centre of conversation during lunch, but afterward julie sent him away with his nurse, and sat down with stacey in the living-room.

it was curious, he thought, what a sense of intimacy he felt, since, except for that one remark of hers, they had talked only of externals.

“julie,” he demanded abruptly, “does everything really run along for you as smoothly as it seems to? are you truly perfectly happy?”

she gave him a startled look, her eyes suddenly troubled. “no,” she said painfully, after a long moment, “i’m not so—bovine as all that. oh,” she added quickly, “i get along! i haven’t any soul tragedies and i’m not in love with some other man than jimmy, but there are things”—she pressed her fingers together nervously—“different things—that i’d like to do—or feel. reckless things!”

looking into her flushed face, stacey perceived a strange unknown julie, and he, too, was troubled and remorseful. “i didn’t know,” he said.

“you never tried to find out, did you, stacey dear?” she replied gently.

“no,” he assented.

“but why should you?” she asked, defending him against her own attack. “every one’s the same way. they all think: ‘oh, julie,—just the typical housewife!’?”

“the more fools they!” stacey muttered.

“no, it’s natural. i behave that way. i have to behave some way.”

“it’s a lot to your credit. the world would be smoother if every one did. don’t be cross with me for stirring you up, jule. it wasn’t nasty—or meant to be. i was only interested.”

she gave him a warm smile. “of course i’m not cross. i think it was nice of you,” she said, quite her everyday self again.

but perhaps it was because of what he had said that she ventured, a little later, to bring up another subject.

“stacey,” she began, rather hesitantly, “i think what father has done in asking catherine to stay at the house is splendid, and i’m truly glad about it. i love catherine. but i thought perhaps you ought to know that some people are gossiping about it.”

“are they?” he remarked. “we thought—father and i—that they probably would.”

julie looked relieved. “then that’s all right,” she observed. “it was only on catherine’s account that i was disturbed.”

“catherine would mind even less than we.”

julie nodded. “and of course,” she went on, “they don’t dare say anything really nasty—only small catty things.” she paused for a moment, looking at her brother. “do you know who it was that started such talk?” she added suddenly. “marian price.”

stacey’s brows contracted. “marian?” he repeated slowly. “what kind of things did marian say?”

his sister’s face was hard. “oh, that it was all a scheme of catherine’s to catch you! and that you were so susceptible she’d undoubtedly succeed.”

stacey experienced a sudden sick disgust, but the feeling vanished presently. “poor marian!” he said.

“poor marian!” julie cried. “why, i’d like to know? hasn’t she got what she wanted?”

“no. because she doesn’t know what she wants,” stacey returned slowly. “she wants so many different conflicting things, and she doesn’t know what any of them are. marian’s wretched.”

but julie’s eyes were cold. “anyhow, you’ve been away this winter, so you don’t know all that i do about marian. i’m afraid she’s a bad lot.”

stacey winced. “no,” he replied, though kindly enough, “you’re not afraid of that, julie. you’d rather have it so.”

his sister rose quickly and came over to sit beside him on the davenport. “yes,” she admitted contritely, “that was nasty of me. but i can’t like marian. i never could.” she gazed at her brother timidly. “stace,” she said, her face flushing, “are you—are you still in love with marian?” she appeared rather frightened at her own daring.

“no,” he replied simply, looking straight into his sister’s eyes. “no. not any more. not the least bit.”

julie drew a deep breath. “then you may be as sorry for her as you like,” she said happily.

the rest of their talk was matter-of-fact and trivial enough. but when stacey got up to go julie accompanied him to the door. she seemed all at once a little uneasy.

“stacey,” she remarked, not looking at him and playing with a button of his coat, “please don’t think from—anything i said—that i’m not—decently happy. i am; of course i am. it sounds ungrateful. no one could be sweeter than jimmy; and then there’s junior. i—”

her brother laughed. “don’t be a silly, jule!” he interrupted. “i understood perfectly well what you meant. that, in spite of everything, you did have some thwarted desires. so has jimmy, no doubt. so has every one. it’s just as well, i dare say. there’s been less thwarting than normally going on these last few years—the lid’s been lifted a little—and look at the hellish mess! good-bye. thanks a lot. i had a lovely time.”

as he walked away he meditated about marian. how she hated him! oh, not because he had broken their engagement. in the end she had seen eye-to-eye with him about that, acquiescing cynically in his second estimate of her (which, he knew now, had been as false as his first). she was angry because he had not come to her house that winter night. he pictured vividly how she must have looked, what she must have felt, while she sat there waiting and waiting, till at last, white and still with fury, she went up to bed. she had offered him all that she thought she had to give, and he had accepted, then changed his mind. consciously superior in morals, she must have thought him. he hadn’t been, heaven knew! no wonder she hated him! he had no passion left for marian—at least, there was none in the thought of her; there was no telling what her physical presence might stir up in him—but he felt a bruised tenderness for her and sorrow that she should be so wretched. he had loved her. her alone!

after a while he came to the park. and there, sitting on the same bench from which she had called to him that afternoon when stacey had broken his engagement to marian, he found mrs. latimer. but now he saw her first and stood quite near to her for a full half-minute before she caught sight of him. now, as then, she was poking holes in the gravel with the point of a parasol, but she did not seem the same, he thought; her pose was tired, and the droop of her shoulders. when she became aware of some one’s close presence and looked up he was shocked; she appeared so old and worn. then her face flashed into glad recognition, and the impression lost its acuteness.

“why, stacey,” she exclaimed, “did you drop from the sky?” she moved over to make room for him on the bench, and he sat down.

“it’s just about a year ago—not quite,” he returned, “that i found you here in the same place. only then you had to call me. this time it’s i who surprise you. i’m awfully glad to see you, mrs. latimer. i was coming to your house presently.”

“and you got back?”

“yesterday.”

she gazed at him with affectionate curiosity. and now her familiar smile and bearing, all her known quality, was as a lack of focus in a lens, blurring the objective; yet, even so, he still felt that she was somehow changed—older, less resilient.

“you look very strong and composed and sure of yourself,” she said at last.

“do i? well, that’s good!” he returned lightly.

she let it go at that, tactfully, and they talked of outside things,—of his life in pickens, of vernon, of how lovely the month was. about herself mrs. latimer said nothing at all, and this worried stacey until it occurred to him that she had never talked of herself, save only, suddenly, on that one afternoon a year ago here in the park.

“you must come home with me now,” she observed after a while, “and i will give you tea.” and she got up, rather wearily.

her drawing-room was just as he remembered it. the light gleamed in just the same way from the ivory wood-work and along the polished surfaces of the same exquisite vases. but the room seemed to stacey like a deadened melody played on muted strings. it was a romantic room and it needed marian—the old elfish marian, slipping in and out lightly,—to vivify it. he looked around him dreamily.

mrs. latimer had sunk down on a divan and removed her hat slowly. now she was leaning back and looking at stacey, not so much curiously as wistfully.

“it’s very good to have you here, stacey,” she said at last simply.

“thank you,” he replied, warmed by her affection and feeling soothed by the delicate hushed beauty of the room, which had no connection with the outside world. the maid brought in the tea things.

but the water had been boiling in the silver urn for some little time before mrs. latimer finally made the tea. it seemed to demand a conscious effort for her to lift her hand to the urn.

“you’re tired,” said stacey suddenly. “aren’t you feeling well?”

she started, so that some of the water spilled over upon the tray; for just a moment she gave him an odd pained look; then she turned about quickly and laid her head against the back of the divan. her shoulders shook with sobs, and there was fatigue without relaxation in every line of her taut body.

stacey was shocked. he had always thought of mrs. latimer as strong, cool, and too wise to be shaken by any tempest. he had no idea of what to do or say. instinctively he desired to stand near her and comfort her, but he feared that this would only make things worse. so he sat silent and gazed at her pityingly.

after a while she looked up. “forgive me!” she began; then at sight of his expression her mouth trembled and she cried again. but presently she regained control of herself and wiped her eyes. then stacey saw that she was an old woman with a weary tragic face.

“i beg your pardon, stacey,” she murmured unsteadily.

“what is it?” he asked gently.

“nothing! i just—can’t go on with it.”

“tell me.”

she was silent for a moment. “it was only because you were kind, stacey, and seemed to feel interest in me.”

she did not mean this as a reproof, he knew, but he was aware that it was a damning one. her interest in him had always been immense and generous; what interest had he ever shown in her? he had taken her for granted.

“tell me,” he repeated.

“but—there are so many things one doesn’t say—one isn’t allowed. if i told the truth i should seem shameful, violating decency.” her eyes were chilly now and questioning.

he shook his head.

“well, then,” she said suddenly, in a hard voice, “it’s my husband—or partly. perhaps he finds me as faulty as i find him, but, oh, he’s finely greedy, finely futile, finely avaricious, finely sterile in every human sentiment! i could bear all those things—perhaps—but for his fineness in all of them. i can’t live with him any longer. i loathe him. what have i done with my life, stacey? i look down on nothing but ruins. my only child does not love me, nor i her. what good to bear a child? what is such a life for? i’ve been tolerant too long. what’s it all about—life?”

“don’t!” he said quickly. “you can’t do it that way! i—i know.”

his tone calmed her and she looked at him in a pathetic questioning manner, as though she, who had always been like a watchful mother to him, were now his child. he sincerely did not like to talk about himself; he would always have an almost fierce aloofness. but he would give mrs. latimer what he could—if there was anything to give.

“see!” he said. “life is—life is a medusa. try to face it and it freezes you to stone. you must look at the—the mirrored reflection in yourself, in the shield of your own personality. then you can see it, without horror, for the pitiful, snake-crowned, impotently ugly thing it is.” he paused, with an odd smile. “you even,” he added slowly, “can see a ravaged beauty in it.”

mrs. latimer stared at him in silence, but the tensity in her face had vanished, perhaps because she was surprised.

“and the sword—perseus’ sword?” she asked finally.

“no,” he said, “that’s as far as the analogy goes. there is no sword.”

she gazed at him with a gentle eager look, and he saw that he really had helped her—not probably through anything he had said, but by awakening her capacity for sympathetic interest in others, her deep altruism. it was of him she was thinking now—proudly, as though he were herself. and, much as he disliked to, he would have gone on and told her everything he knew about himself if she had asked it. but she seemed to divine the effort he had made, and asked him nothing further.

“oh!” she cried after a moment, with a tremulous laugh. “your tea, stacey!”

“i like it cold, thanks,” he said, also laughing.

and after this they managed to talk almost easily of common things.

but, having risen to draw a curtain at a window, mrs. latimer suddenly turned about. “stacey, you must go now!” she exclaimed. “i have just seen my husband coming up the street. i couldn’t bear to have you here in the room with both of us after what i said. i exaggerated. it isn’t as bad as all that. i shall be all right.”

he held out his hand to say good-bye, but she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “thank you,” she said.

as he left the house stacey met mr. latimer. he looked like a steel engraving of a gentleman.

“ah, you’re just going?” he remarked, with his cool polished smile.

“sorry!” said stacey. “i must.”