went to stand with
his back to the flickering blaze in the grate. It was going to leave a
huge rift in his life when this thing, with all its rootings and
anchorings in childhood and boyhood, was torn out and cast aside. The
mere thought of it was appalling. What would there be to fill the void?

As if the question had evoked them, alluring shapes began to rise out of
the depths. Ambition, though he knew it not by name, was the first that
beckoned. The craftsman's blood stirred to its reawakening: to know how,
and to do things; to compel the iron and steel and the stubborn forces
of nature. This would be worthwhile; but better still, he would learn to
be a leader of men. The magic vista opened again, but this time it
stretched away into the future, and he saw himself keeping step with the
ever-advancing march of progress--nay, even setting the pace in his own
corner of the vast field. His father was content to follow; he would
learn the trick of it and lead. The Farleys were said to be rich and
steadily growing richer--not out of Chiawassee Iron, to be sure, but in
others of their multifarious out-reachings; very good,--he would be
rich, too. What a Duxbury Farley could do, he would do; on a larger
scale and with a stubborner patience. He--

It was a mere turning of the head that sent the air-castles tumbling and
left him choking in the dust of their dissolution. Something, he fancied
it was a noise or some slight movement, made him look quickly toward the
bed; and at sight of the still, white face among the pillows, boyish
love--God Himself has made no stronger passion--swept doubt, distrust,
rebellion, worldly ambition, all, into the abyss of renunciation. He
went softly, groping because the quick tears blinded him, to kneel at
the bedside. She was his mother; for one thing she had lived and striven
and prayed; living or dying she must not, she should not, be
disappointed. And if his service must be of the lip and not of the
heart, she should never suspect, never, never!

And so it came about that he knelt in the graying dawn of the Christmas
morning, with his soul in thick darkness, lifting the prayer that in
some form has shaped itself in all the ages on lips of trembling: "O
God, if there be a God, have mercy on my soul, if I have a soul!"

XVI

THE BUBBLE, REPUTATION

It was not until late in the afternoon of Christmas Day that Ardea was
able to slip away from her guests long enough to run over to ap