lagrantly lose his
heart to another?"

Mrs. Weguelin replied quickly. "That answers very well where hearts are
in question."

"But," said I, "since phosphates are no longer--?"

There was a pause. "It would be a new dilemma," Mrs. Gregory then said
slowly, "if she turned out to care for him, after all."

Throughout all this I was getting more and more the sense of how a
total circle of people, a well-filled, wide circle of interested people,
surrounded and cherished John Mayrant, made itself the setting of which
he was the jewel; I felt in it, even stronger than the manifestation
of personal affection (which certainly was strong enough), a collective
sense of possession in him, a clan value, a pride and a guardianship
concentrated and jealous, as of an heir to some princely estate, who
must be worthy for the sake of a community even before he was worthy
for his own sake. Thus he might amuse himself--it was in the code that
princely heirs so should pour se deniaiser, as they neatly put it in
Paris--thus might he and must he fight when his dignity was assailed;
but thus might he not marry outside certain lines prescribed, or depart
from his circle's established creeds, divine and social, especially to
hold any position which (to borrow Mrs. Gregory's phrase) "reflected
ignominy" upon them all. When he transgressed, their very value for him
turned them bitter against him. I know that all of us are more or less
chained to our community, which is pleased to expect us to walk its way,
and mightily displeased when we please ourselves instead by breaking
the chain and walking our own way; and I know that we are forgiven very
slowly; but I had not dreamed what a prisoner to communal criticism a
young American could be until I beheld Kings Port over John Mayrant.

And to what estate was this prince heir? Alas, his inheritance was all
of it the Past and none of it the Future; was the full churchyard and
the empty wharves! He was paying dear for his princedom! And then, there
was yet another sense of this beautiful town that I got here completely,
suddenly crystallized, though slowly gathering ever since my arrival:
all these old people were clustered about one young one. That was it;
that was the town's ultimate tragic note: the old timber of the forest
dying and the too sparse new growth appearing scantily amid the tall,
fine, venerable, decaying trunks. It had been by no razing to the ground
and sowing with salt that the ci