plied I to the waiting captain. "Go back down
the Sound--to Dawn Hill."

Yes, I would go to the peaceful, soothing country, to my dogs and horses
and those faithful servants bound to me by our common love for the same
animals. "Men to cross swords with, to amuse oneself with," I mused; "but
dogs and horses to live with." I pictured myself at the kennels--the joyful
uproar the instant instinct warned the dogs of my coming; how they would
leap and bark and tremble in a very ecstasy of delight as I stood among
them; how jealous all the others would be, as I selected one to caress.

"Send her ahead as fast as she'll go," I called to the captain.

As the _Albatross_ steamed into the little harbor, I saw Mowbray
Langdon's _Indolence_ at anchor. I glanced toward Steuben Point--where
his cousins, the Vivians, lived--and thought I recognized his launch at
their pier. We saluted the _Indolence_; the _Indolence_ saluted
us. My launch was piped away and took me ashore. I strolled along the path
that wound round the base of the hill toward the kennels. At the crossing
of the path down from the house, I paused and lingered on the glimpse
of one of the corner towers of the great showy palace. I was muttering
something--I listened to myself. It was: "Mulholland, Mrs. Mulholland and
the four little Mulhollands." And I felt like laughing aloud, such a joke
was it that I should be envying a policeman his potato patch and his fat
wife and his four brats, and that he should be in a position to pity me.

You may be imagining that, through all, Anita had been dominating my mind.
That is the way it is in the romances; but not in life. No doubt there are
men who brood upon the impossible, and moon and maunder away their lives
over the grave of a dead love; no doubt there are people who will say that,
because I did not shoot Langdon or her, or myself, or fly to a desert or
pose in the crowded places of the world as the last scene of a tragedy,
I therefore cared little about her. I offer them this suggestion: A man
strong enough to give a love worth a woman's while is strong enough to live
on without her when he finds he may not live with her.

As I stood there that summer day, looking toward the crest of the hill,
at the mocking mausoleum of my dead dream, I realized what the incessant
battle of the Street had meant to me. "There is peace for me only in the
storm," said I. "But, thank God, there is peace for me somewhere."

Through the folia