srupted by the ceaseless clash of two utterly opposed ideas,
emotions. There was, first, the need in the individual to serve,
to justify, himself, to maintain his integrity; and, as well,
there was the duty--at least, it was universally called a duty--of
a self-sacrifice for love. The failures of superior men came largely,
he was certain, in the breaking down of the first through the second.
A man, for example, put into motion the accomplishment of his own
demand, and then was appalled by the incidental price, but more to
others than to himself. Yes, love betrayed men. The Escobars were,
inseparably, Cuba, they were happily merged, lost, in one supreme
cause; yet the superiority of their hearts over the head endangered
their dearest preoccupation. They saw symbols as realities, they
wrongly valued emotion more highly than reasoning.

And further, Charles returned to himself, if he had consulted and
listened to his parents, if his love of home had outweighed his
singular vision, he would be nothing now but an unimportant drifting
figure. His parents had had more knowledge of life than he;
undoubtedly their counsel, in the main, was correct, safe. That word,
safe, was it specially. The instinct of his mother was to preserve, to
spare, him; to win for him as smooth a passage through life as was
procurable. She had her particular feminine idea of what, in her son,
spelled solid accomplishment; and, with all her spirit, it was
material in so far as it was visible: position in a settled community,
the money necessary for an existence both dignified and ornamental, a
"nice" wife--another devoted sheltering soul such as herself--and
well-behaved handsome children. The inner qualities she demanded for
him were faith, honesty, and fidelity.

Her vision of a broad close-cut lawn and grey stone house with pillars
and a port-cochere, his wife, in silks and chaste jewels, receiving a
polite company in the drawing-room, was admirable. In it he would be
gray-haired and, together with an increasing stoutness, of an assured
dignity. His children would worship his wisdom and paternal
benevolence, and the world of affairs would listen to him with
attentive respect. It was, unquestionably, an impressive conception.
Every detail was excellent, but he cared for, revered, none of them.

He didn't want to be safe, to decline softly to a soft old age, a
death smothered in feathers. More than anything else his desire was to
live intensely, to