a curious sensation of unreality, as though she were speaking of a
person whom she had known in another life. It was three days since she
had seen Oliver, and in those three days she had lived and died many
times.

CHAPTER IX

THE PROBLEM OF THE SOUTH

"Father, I want to marry John Henry," said Susan, just as she had said
almost ten years ago, "Father, I want to go to college."

It was a March afternoon, ashen and windy, with flocks of small fleecy
clouds hurrying across a changeable blue sky, and the vague, roving
scents of early spring in the air. After his dinner, which he had taken
for more than fifty years precisely at two o'clock, Cyrus had sat down
for a peaceful pipe on the back porch before returning to the office.
Between the sunken bricks in the little walled-in yard, blades of vivid
green grass had shot up, seeking light out of darkness, and along the
grey wooden ledge of the area the dauntless sunflowers were unfolding
their small stunted leaves. On the railing of the porch a moth-eaten
cat--the only animal for whom Cyrus entertained the remotest
respect--was contentedly licking the shabby fur on her side.

"Father, I want to marry John Henry," repeated Susan, raising her voice
to a higher key and towering like a flesh and blood image of Victory
over the sagging cane chair in which he sat.

Taking his pipe from his mouth, he looked up at her; and so little had
he altered in ten years, that the thought flashed through her mind that
he had actually suffered no change of expression since the afternoon on
which she had asked him to send her to college. As a man he may not have
been impressive, but as a defeating force who could say that he had not
attained his fulfilment? It was as if the instinct of patriarchal
tyranny had entrenched itself in his person as in a last stronghold of
the disappearing order. When he died many things would pass away out of
Dinwiddie--not only the soul and body of Cyrus Treadwell, but the
vanishing myth of the "strong man," the rule of the individual despot,
the belief in the inalienable right of the father to demand blood
sacrifices. For in common with other men of his type, he stood equally
for industrial advancement and for domestic immobility. The body social
might move, but the units that formed the body social must remain
stationary.

"Well, I don't think I'd worry about marrying, if I were you," he
replied, not unkindly, for Susan inspired him with a respect a