ter two years of annoyed effort,
withdrew to lead a more congenial existence on a secure, adequate
income.

"It was a mistake," he said aloud, in a decided, clearly modulated
voice, gazing blankly into the warm stillness of the room. It had come
partly from his innate impatience with any inferior state whatever, and
part from the old inability to identify himself with the practicalities
of existence. He had always viewed with distaste the apparently
necessary compromises of successful living; the struggle for money,
commercial supremacy, seemed unendurably ugly; the jargon and
subterfuges of financial competition beneath his exacting standard of
personal dignity. That had been his expression at the time--permeated by
an impatient sense of superiority; but now he felt that there was
something essential lacking in himself. An absence of proper balance.
Solely concerned with the appearance, the insignificant surface, of such
efforts as Bundy Provost's, their moving, masculine spirit had evaded
him. Yes, it had been a mistake. He had missed the greatest pleasure of
all, that of accumulating power and influence, of virile achievement.

Well, it was over now; he was old; his life, his chance, had gone; and
all that remained were memories of Patti smiling disdainfully in the
flare of oil torches about her carriage; the only concrete record of so
many years the scrap books such as that on his knees.

It had been an error; yet there had been, within him, no choice, no
intimation of a different, more desirable, consummation. Bundy had gone
one way and himself another in obedience to forces beyond their
understanding or control. They had done, briefly, what they were. There
was no individual blame to attach, no applause; spare moralizing to
append. He returned to the pages before him, to the memories of the
radiant Ambre and Marimon, the sylvan echoes of Campanini singing
Elvino.

Now his recovered glass was intent on a programme of the rapidly
successful Metropolitan forces, of the new German Opera, with
Seidl-Krauss singing Elizabeth, and Brandt in _Fidelio_. Even here,
after so long, he vibrated again to the exquisite beauty of Lenore's
constancy and love. Then Dr. Damrosch dead, the sonorous funeral in the
Opera House ... That had been changed with the rest; the baignoires were
gone, the tiers of boxes newly curved; gone the chandeliers and Turkey
red carpet and gold threaded brocade that had seemed the final
expression o