unobserved, let fall the mask that hid his secret self from even those
who loved him most. Sinking down upon the bench, he groaned aloud,
while his daughter, looking upon that huddled figure of abject misery
and despair, knew that she was witnessing a mental anguish that could
come only from some source deep hidden beneath the surface of her
father's life. She could not move. As one under some strange spell, she
was helpless.

The doctors had said--diplomatically--that Adam Ward's ill health was a
nervous trouble, resulting from his lifelong devotion to his work, with
no play spell or rest, and no relief through interest in other things.
But Adam Ward knew the real reason for the medical men's insistent
advice that he retire from the stress of the Mill to the quiet of his
estate. He knew it from his wife's anxious care and untiring
watchfulness. He knew it from the manner of his business associates
when they asked how he felt. He knew when, at some trivial incident or
word, he would be caught, helpless, in the grip of an ungovernable rage
that would leave him exhausted for many weary, brooding hours. He felt
it in the haunting, unconquerable fears that beset him--by the feeling
of some dread presence watching him--by the convictions that unknown
enemies were seeking his life--by his terrifying dreams of the hell of
his inherited religion.

And the real reason for his condition Adam Ward knew. It was not the
business to which he had driven himself so relentlessly. It was not
that he had no other interests to take his mind from the Mill. It was a
thing that he had fought, in secret, almost every hour of every year of
his accumulating successes. It was a thing which his neighbors and
associates and family felt in his presence but could not name--a thing
which made him turn his eyes away from a frank, straightforward look