one will; but Kendricks, though a sage of twenty-seven, was still
too young to understand this.

Beaton scarcely understood it himself, perhaps because he was not yet
twenty-seven. He only knew that his will was somehow sick; that it spent
itself in caprices, and brought him no happiness from the fulfilment of
the most vehement wish. But he was aware that his wishes grew less and
less vehement; he began to have a fear that some time he might have none
at all. It seemed to him that if he could once do something that was
thoroughly distasteful to himself, he might make a beginning in the
right direction; but when he tried this on a small scale, it failed, and
it seemed stupid. Some sort of expiation was the thing he needed, he was
sure; but he could not think of anything in particular to expiate; a man
could not expiate his temperament, and his temperament was what Beaton
decided to be at fault. He perceived that it went deeper than even fate
would have gone; he could have fulfilled an evil destiny and had done
with it, however terrible. His trouble was that he could not escape from
himself; and, for the most part, he justified himself in refusing
to try. After he had come to that distinct understanding with Alma
Leighton, and experienced the relief it really gave him, he thought
for a while that if it had fallen out otherwise, and she had put him in
charge of her destiny, he might have been better able to manage his own.
But as it was, he could only drift, and let all other things take their
course. It was necessary that he should go to see her afterward, to show
her that he was equal to the event; but he did not go so often, and he
went rather oftener to the Dryfooses; it was not easy to see Margaret
Vance, except on the society terms. With much sneering and scorning,
he fulfilled the duties to Mrs. Horn without which he knew he should be
dropped from her list; but one might go to many of her Thursdays without
getting many words with her niece. Beaton hardly knew whether he wanted
many; the girl kept the charm of her innocent stylishness; but latterly
she wanted to talk more about social questions than about the psychical
problems that young people usually debate so personally. Son of the
working-people as he was, Beaton had never cared anything about such
matters; he did not know about them or wish to know; he was perhaps too
near them. Besides, there was an embarrassment, at least on her part,
concerning the Dryfooses.