expanse of the course in the high gaunt key of winter. His house,
across the road, showed regular cheerful rectangles of orange
illumination: he always returned to it with a feeling of relief and
pleasant anticipation, but he was very far from sharing Fanny's
passionate attachment to their home. Away--on past trips to the
Michigan iron ore fields and now on shorter journeys to eastern
financial centers--he never thought of it, he was absorbed by business.

But in that he wasn't alone, it was true of the majority of successful
men he knew over forty; they saw their wives, their homes, they thought
of their families, only in the intervals of their tyrannical
occupations. He, in reality, was rather better there than most, for he
occasionally stayed out at Eastlake to play golf; he was locally
interested, active, in the small town of Fanny's birth. Other men--

He made a calculation of how much time a practising lawyer saw his
wife: certainly he was out of the house before nine--Lee knew lawyers
who were in their offices at seven-thirty--and he was hardly back until
after five. Nine hours absent daily through the week; and it was
probable that he was in bed by eleven, up at seven--seven hours' sleep;
of the eight hours left in twenty-four half if not two-thirds of the
Sundays and some part of the others were devoted to a recreation; and
this took no account of the briefcases brought home, the thought and
contributary preoccupations.

More than that, his mind, his hopes and planning, were constantly
directed toward his legal concerns; the wife of such a man filled about
the position of his golf or billiards. Lee Randon had never analyzed
this before, and the result amazed him. With younger men, of course, it
was different; they had more time and interest for their homes, their