ties.

It was a small room, furnished chiefly by book-shelves, which were still
unfinished, and with a depressing view from a single window of red tin
roofs and blackened chimneys. Above the chimneys a narrow band of sky,
spangled with a few stars, was visible from where Oliver stood, and now
and then he stopped in his work and gazed up at it with an exalted and
resolute look. Sometimes a thin shred of smoke floated in from the
kitchen chimney, and hung, as if drawn and held there by some magnetic
attraction, around the kerosene lamp on a corner of the washstand. The
sultriness of the night, which was oppressive even in the street, was
almost stifling in the little room with its scant western exposure.

But the flame burning in Oliver's breast had purged away such petty
considerations as those for material comforts. He had risen above the
heat, above the emptiness of his pockets, above the demands of his
stomach. It was a matter of complete indifference to him whether he
slept in a house or out of doors, whether he ate or went hungry. His
exaltation was so magnificent that while it lasted he felt that he had
conquered the physical universe. He was strong! He was free! And it was
characteristic of his sanguine intellect that the future should appear
to him at the instant as something which existed not beyond him, but
actually within his grasp. Anger had liberated his spirit as even art
had not done; and he felt that all the blood in his body had rushed to
his brain and given him the mastery over circumstances. He forgot
yesterday as easily as he evaded to-day and subjugated to-morrow. The
past, with its starved ambitions, its tragic failures, its blighting
despondencies, melted away from him into obscurity; and he remembered
only the brief alternating hours of ecstasy and of accomplishment. With
his wind-blown, flame-like temperament, oscillating in the heat of youth
between the inclinations he miscalled convictions, he was still, though
Cyrus had disowned him, only a romantic variation from the Treadwell
stock. Somewhere, in the depths of his being, the essential Treadwell
persisted. He hated Cyrus as a man hates his own weakness; he revolted
from materialism as only a materialist in youth revolts.

A knock came at his door, and pausing, with a volume of Heine still
unwrapped in his hand, he waited in silence until his visitor should
retire down the stairs. But instead of Mrs. Treadwell's trembling
tones, he heard, af