embodied, the perfect adaptation of means to
ends. He had perceived, more clearly than she
could have appreciated it at that time, the
undeveloped elements of discord between Rena and her
former life. He had imagined her lending grace
and charm to his own household. Still another
motive, a purely psychological one, had more or
less consciously influenced him. He had no fear
that the family secret would ever be discovered,--
he had taken his precautions too thoroughly, he
thought, for that; and yet he could not but feel,
at times, that if peradventure--it was a conceivable
hypothesis--it should become known, his
fine social position would collapse like a house of
cards. Because of this knowledge, which the
world around him did not possess, he had felt now
and then a certain sense of loneliness; and there
was a measure of relief in having about him
one who knew his past, and yet whose knowledge,
because of their common interest, would not
interfere with his present or jeopardize his future.
For he had always been, in a figurative sense, a
naturalized foreigner in the world of wide
opportunity, and Rena was one of his old compatriots,
whom he was glad to welcome into the populous
loneliness of his adopted country.



VIII