The memory was more of a weariness to him than a sharp regret. Of what use is remorse—after the fact? Let it come before and all will be well.

At last, more by accident than design, he drew out of the muddy ways into which he had fallen and limped off—not so much toward better things as away from worse.

Then it was that Romance had come for him, and carried him on strong wings upward toward the empyrean.

Even now, she was only twenty. She had married a man more than twice her age. He had been her guardian, and she had felt that it was her duty. Her marriage proved desperately unhappy. She and Arthur met, and, as upon a signal, loved.

For a few weeks of one golden summer, they had known the ethereal bliss of seeing each other every day. They met as little children, and so parted. They accepted the law and convention which stood between them, not as a barrier to be crossed or circumvented but with childlike faith as a something absolutely impassable—like the space which separates the earth and the moon.

[Pg 41]

[Pg 41]

They remained utterly innocent in thought and deed, merely loved and longed and renounced so very hard that their poor young hearts almost broke.

Not so the "old man."

It happened, in the autumn of that year, that he brought his wife to New York, in whose Wall Street he had intricate interests. He learned that she was by way of seeing more of Arthur than a girl of eighteen married to a man of nearly fifty ought to see. He did not at once burst into coarse abuse of her, but, worldly-wise, set detectives to watch her. He had, you may say, set his heart upon her guilt. To learn that she was utterly innocent enraged him. One day he had the following conversation with a Mr. May, of a private detective bureau:

"You followed them?"

"To the park."

"Well?"

"They bought a bag of peanuts and fed the squirrels."

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