faintly a-flutter with white through an intense gloss of gold-green.

Henry realized all the glory of it, but it filled him with a renewal
of the sad and bitter resentment, which was his usual mood, instead
of joy. He was past middle-age. He worked in a shoe-shop. He had
worked in a shoe-shop since he was a young man. There was nothing
else in store for him until he was turned out because of old age.
Then the future looked like a lurid sunset of misery. He earned
reasonably good wages for a man of his years, but prices were so high
that he was not able to save a cent. There had been unusual expenses
during the past ten years, too. His wife Sylvia had not been well,
and once he himself had been laid up six weeks with rheumatism. The
doctor charged two dollars for every visit, and the bill was not
quite settled yet.

Then the little house which had come to him from his father,
encumbered with a mortgage as is usual, had all at once seemed to
need repairs at every point. The roof had leaked like a sieve, two
windows had been blown in, the paint had turned a gray-black, the
gutters had been out of order. He had not quite settled the bill for
these repairs. He realized it always as an actual physical incubus
upon his slender, bowed shoulders. He came of a race who were
impatient of debt, and who regarded with proud disdain all gratuitous
benefits from their fellow-men. Henry always walked a long route from
the shop in order to avoid passing the houses of the doctor and the
carpenter whom he owed.

Once he had saved a little money; that was twenty-odd years before;
but he had invested it foolishly, and lost every cent. That
transaction he regarded with hatred, both of himself and of the