a sigh almost inaudible he turned and went down the heavily carpeted hall, followed by the trail of her impatient cold words:

“Oh, are you there yet? Why won’t you hurry? I know you’ll be late!”

He shut the great mahogany door behind him with a dull thud. He would have liked to have slammed it, but the doors in that house could not slam. They were too heavy and too well hung on their oiled hinges. It shut him in like a vault to a costly room where everything had been done for his comfort, yet comfort was not. He did not hasten even yet. He went and stood at the window looking out, looking down to the area below; to the paved alleyway that ran between the blocks and gave access to the back door and the garage. A row of brick houses on the side street ended at that alleyway, and a light twinkled in a kitchen window where a woman’s[Pg 16] figure moved to and fro between a table and the stove—a pleasant cheery scene reminding one of homecoming and sweet domesticity, a thing he had always yearned for, yet never found since he was a little child in his father’s home at the farm, with a gentle mother living and a house full of boisterous, loving brothers and sisters. He watched the woman wistfully. What if Violet had been a woman like that, who would set the table for supper and go about the stove preparing little dishes. He laughed aloud bitterly at the thought. Violet in her slim dinner gown, her dangling earrings and her French bob, risking her lily and rose complexion over a fire!

[Pg 16]

He turned sharply back to his room, snapped on the electric light and went and stood before the two great silver frames that adorned his dressing-table. One held the picture of the lovely delicate woman, almost a girl in appearance, smart, artistic, perfect as the world counts perfection. It was a part of her pride that placed her picture in his room for others to see his devotion, and had it changed each time a new picture that pleased her was taken. His pleasure in her picture had long ago vanished, but he studied her face now with that yearning look in his own, as if again he searched for the thing that was not there; as if his eyes would force from the printed card a quality that the soul must be hiding.

Then with a long sigh he turned to the other frame—the young careless handsome face of his son, Murray Montgomery Van Rensselaer. That honored name! How proud he had been when they[Pg 17] gave it to his child! What dreams he had had that his son would add still more honor to that name!

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