r bent his knee in
the end to the tin gods of convention.

Her eyes--beautiful as the eyes of all happy women are beautiful--dwelt
on him kindly while he struggled to explain his mission. All the dread
of the unusual, all the inherited belief in the sanctity of fixed
opinions, all the passionate distrust of ideas that have not stood the
test of centuries--these things which make for the safety and the
permanence of the racial life, were in the look of motherly indulgence
with which she regarded him. She had just risen from a rocking-chair on
the long porch, where honest Tom sat relating ponderous war anecdotes to
an attentive group of boarders; and beyond her in the dimly lighted hall
he could see the wide old staircase climbing leisurely into the
mysterious silence of the upper storeys.

"I have a small room at the back that I might rent to you," she said
hesitatingly after a pause. "I am afraid you will find it warm in
summer, as it is just under the roof and has a western exposure, but I
hardly think I could do better for you at the price you are able to pay.
I understood that you intended to live with your uncle," she added in a
burst of enthusiasm. "My husband has always been one of his greatest
admirers."

The mention of Cyrus was like a spur to Oliver's ambition, and he
realized with gratitude that it was merely his sensibility, not his
resolution, which had been shaken.

"I'll take the room," he returned, ignoring what she had said as well as
what she had implied about Cyrus. Then as she tripped ahead of him, he
entered the dismantled hall, filled with broken pieces of fine old
furniture, and ascended the stairs as far as the third storey. When she
turned a loosened door-knob and passed before him into the little room
at the back, he saw first of all the narrow window, with its torn green
shade, beyond which clustered a blur of silvery foliage in the midst of
red roofs and huddled chimneys. From this hilltop, he could look down
unseen on that bit of the universal life which was Dinwiddie. He could
watch the town at work and at play; he could see those twenty-one
thousand souls either moved as a unit by the secret forces which ignore
individuality, or separated and enclosed by that impenetrable wall of
personality which surrounded each atom among them. He could follow the
divisions of class and the still deeper divisions of race as they were
symbolized in the old brick walls, overgrown with young grasses, whi