it had never occurred to him to image her in a relation he himself
associated with shackles. One of the unconscious causes of his
fascination was just her emancipation from and innocence of that
herd-convention to which most women--even those who lack wedding
rings--are slaves. The force of such an appeal to a man of Ditmar's type
must not be underestimated. And the idea that she, too, might prefer the
sanction of the law, the gilded cage as a popular song which once had
taken his fancy illuminatingly expressed it--seemed utterly incongruous
with the freedom and daring of her spirit, was a sobering shock. Was he
prepared to marry her, if he could obtain her in no other way? The
question demanded a survey of his actual position of which he was at the
moment incapable. There were his children! He had never sought to arrive
at even an approximate estimate of the boy and girl as factors in his
life, to consider his feelings toward them; but now, though he believed
himself a man who gave no weight to social considerations--he had scorned
this tendency in his wife--he was to realize the presence of ambitions
for them. He was young, he was astonishingly successful; he had reason to
think, with his opportunities and the investments he already had made,
that he might some day be moderately rich; and he had at times even
imagined himself in later life as the possessor of one of those elaborate
country places to be glimpsed from the high roads in certain localities,
which the sophisticated are able to recognize as the seats of the
socially ineligible, but which to Ditmar were outward and visible emblems
of success. He liked to think of George as the inheritor of such a place,
as the son of a millionaire, as a "college graduate," as an influential
man of affairs; he liked to imagine Amy as the wife of such another. In
short, Ditmar's wife had left him, as an unconscious legacy, her
aspirations for their children's social prestige....

The polished oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he