t
made him forget how little choice he really had in the matter, and how,
since he had not accepted the offer to edit the insurance paper,
nothing remained for him but to close with Fulkerson. In this moment of
suspicion and resentment he accused Fulkerson of hastening his decision
in regard to the Grosvenor Green apartment; he now refused to consider
it a decision, and said to himself that if he felt disposed to do so he
would send Mrs. Green a note reversing it in the morning. But he put it
all off till morning with his clothes, when he went to bed, he put
off even thinking what his wife would say; he cast Fulkerson and his
constructive treachery out of his mind, too, and invited into it some
pensive reveries of the past, when he still stood at the parting of the
ways, and could take this path or that. In his middle life this was not
possible; he must follow the path chosen long, ago, wherever, it led. He
was not master of himself, as he once seemed, but the servant of those
he loved; if he could do what he liked, perhaps he might renounce this
whole New York enterprise, and go off somewhere out of the reach of
care; but he could not do what he liked, that was very clear. In the
pathos of this conviction he dwelt compassionately upon the thought
of poor old Lindau; he resolved to make him accept a handsome sum of
money--more than he could spare, something that he would feel the loss
of--in payment of the lessons in German and fencing given so long
ago. At the usual rate for such lessons, his debt, with interest for
twenty-odd years, would run very far into the hundreds. Too far, he
perceived, for his wife's joyous approval; he determined not to add the
interest; or he believed that Lindau would refuse the interest; he put a
fine speech in his mouth, making him do so; and after that he got Lindau
employment on 'Every Other Week,' and took care of him till he died.

Through all his melancholy and munificence he was aware of sordid
anxieties for having taken the Grosvenor Green apartment. These began
to assume visible, tangible shapes as he drowsed, and to became personal
entities, from which he woke, with little starts, to a realization of
their true nature, and then suddenly fell fast asleep.

In the accomplishment of the events which his reverie played with, there
was much that retroactively stamped it with prophecy, but much also that
was better than he forboded. He found that with regard to the Grosvenor
Green apar