sail-boats in the morning."

I felt an emptiness when the train pulled out. I did love my family,
after all! I would go back to the deserted house, and I could not bear
to look in at the nursery door, at the little beds with covers flung
over them. Why couldn't I appreciate these joys when I had them?

One evening, as we went home in an open street-car together, after such
a departure, Tom blurted out:--"Hugh, I believe I care for your family
as much as for my own. I often wonder if you realize how wonderful these
children are! My boys are just plain ruffians--although I think they're
pretty decent ruffians, but Matthew has a mind--he's thoughtful--and
an imagination. He'll make a name for himself some day if he's steered
properly and allowed to develop naturally. Moreton's more like my boys.
And as for Chickabiddy!--" words failed him.

I put my hand on his knee. I actually loved him again as I had loved
and yearned for him as a child,--he was so human, so dependable. And why
couldn't this feeling last? He disapproved--foolishly, I thought--of
my professional career, and this was only one of his limitations. But
I knew that he was loyal. Why hadn't I been able to breathe and be
reasonably happy in that atmosphere of friendship and love in which I
had been placed--or rather in which I had placed myself?... Before the
summer was a day or two older I had grown accustomed to being alone,
and enjoyed the liberty; and when Maude and the children returned in the
autumn, similarly, it took me some days to get used to the restrictions
imposed by a household. I run the risk of shocking those who read this
by declaring that if my family had been taken permanently out of my
life, I should not long have missed them. But on the whole, in those
years my marriage relation might be called a negative one. There were
moments, as I have described, when I warmed to Maude, moments when I
felt something akin to a violent antagonism aroused by little mannerisms
and tricks she had. The fact that we got along as well as we did
was probably due to the orthodox teaching with which we had been
inoculated,--to the effect that matrimony was a moral trial, a
shaking-down process. But moral trials were ceasing to appeal to people,
and more and more of them were refusing to be shaken down. We didn't cut
the Gordian knot, but we managed to loosen it considerably.

I have spoken of a new species of titans who inhabited the giant
buildings in Wall Str