that evening walking home from the club the man with him had frankly
envied his manner of life, his freedom and independence. He closed
the window, turned off some of the lights, and went back to his
chair. "I am an entirely free and independent person," he said
aloud. "A most desirable condition for a man without a heart." Why
did men have hearts, anyhow, and especially such a queer kind as he
had. In the days of his youth he had expected the days of his
maturity to find him married, find him with the responsibilities and
obligations of other men; but he had strange views of marriage. One
by one his friends had entered the estate; he had helped them enter
it, but he had acquired an unhealthy habit of watching their venture
with wonder at its undertaking and with doubt of its success, and the
years had gone by with no desire on his part to assume the risk.
What he saw was not the life he wanted. Just what he did want he was
not sure; but years of contact with much that blights and withers had
not killed his belief in certain old-fashioned things, and if they
could not come true the journey would be made alone.

What whimsical ways fate had of deciding great issues. Four weeks
ago he was something of a piece of mechanism, fairly content with his
drab-colored life; and now a girl had entered it and brought to him
visions too fair and beautiful to be viewed unveiled, and he knew at
last the mystery and power of love. Almost a week of her stay had
gone before he met her. In those that followed, he had seen her many
times, but frequently he had to stand back and know that others were
taking her time when there was none for him to lose.

Should love come to him, he had imagined he would pursue it with the
same directness and persistence which had impelled the securing of
whatever was determined upon, and instead he was that most despicable