unimportant compared with the present. He gave little thought to
the future.

Then, suddenly, his entire attention became focused on the future.

Just when he had fallen in love with Elizabeth Wheeler he did not
know. He had gone away to the war, leaving her a little girl,
apparently, and he had come back to find her, a woman. He did not
even know he was in love, at first. It was when, one day, he found
himself driving past the Wheeler house without occasion that he
began to grow uneasy.

The future at once became extraordinarily important and so also,
but somewhat less vitally, the past. Had he the right to marry, if
he could make her care for him?

He sat in his chair by the window the night after the Homer baby's
arrival, and faced his situation. Marriage meant many things. It
meant love and companionship, but it also meant, should mean,
children. Had he the right to go ahead and live his life fully and
happily? Was there any chance that, out of the years behind him,
there would come some forgotten thing, some taint or incident, to
spoil the carefully woven fabric of his life?

Not his life. Hers.

On the Monday night after he had asked Elizabeth to go to the theater
he went into David's office and closed the door. Lucy, alive to
every movement in the old house, heard him go in and, rocking in her
chair overhead, her hands idle in her lap, waited in tense anxiety