t, and found the answer was in the
affirmative. It would, he thought, have been a good deal safer for
David's integrity if he had not been so comfortable.

For two summers Ben had made no protest, but the third summer, when
the war was over and the allowance again possible, he urged David not
to go back to Newport. David flatly refused to yield. He said he saw
no reason why he should go on taking Ben's money when this simple way
of earning a full living was open to him. Wasn't Ben's whole theory
that everyone should be self-supporting? Why not be consistent?

Ignorant people might imagine that two affectionate brothers could
not quarrel over an issue purely affectionate. But the Moretons did
quarrel--more bitterly than ever before, and that is saying a great
deal. With the extraordinary tenacity of memory that develops
under strong emotion, they each contrived to recall and to mention
everything which the other had done that was wrong, ridiculous, or
humiliating since their earliest days. They parted with the impression
on David's part that Ben thought him a self-indulgent grafter, and
on Ben's side that David thought him a bully solely interested in
imposing his will on those unfortunate enough to be dependent on him.

It was after half past four when, having walked up five flights of
stairs, he let himself into his modest flat on the top floor of an
old-fashioned brownstone house. As he opened the door, he called,

"Nora!"

No beautiful partner of a free-love affair appeared, but an elderly
woman in spectacles who had once been Professor Moreton's cook,
and now, doing all the housework for Ben, contrived to make him so
comfortable that the editor of a more radical paper than his own had
described the flat as "a bourgeois interior."

"Nora," said Ben, "put something in my bag for the night--I'm going to
Newport in a few minutes."

He had expected a flood of questions, for Nora was no looker-on at
life, and he was surprised by her merely observing that she was glad
he was getting away from the heat. The truth was that she knew far
more about David than he did. She had consistently coddled David since
his infancy, and he told her a great deal. Besides, she took care
of his things when he was at Ben's. She had known of sachets,
photographs, and an engraved locket that he wore on his watch-chain.
She was no radical. She had seen disaster come upon the old professor
and attributed it, not to the narrowness of the tr