tion of his to illuminate things,
life seemed dull.

And he rode, parting in his mind with each lovely thing as he went--the
fields of wheat, the little stream, Lake Okoonee, the pretty Blue
farmhouse, all.

He said to himself: "Nothing more lovely will ever come again. Angela in
my arms in her simple little parlor. Dear God! and there are only
seventy years of life--not more than ten or fifteen of true youth, all
told."

CHAPTER XX

Eugene carried home with him not only a curiously deepened feeling for
Angela, due to their altered and more intimate relationship, but
moreover a growing respect for her family. Old Jotham was so impressive
a figure of a man; his wife so kindly and earnest. Their attitude toward
their children and to each other was so sound, and their whole
relationship to society so respectable. Another observer might have been
repelled by the narrowness and frugality of their lives. But Eugene had
not known enough of luxury to be scornful of the material simplicity of
such existence. Here he had found character, poetry of location, poetry
of ambition, youth and happy prospects. These boys, so sturdy and
independent, were sure to make for themselves such places in the world
as they desired. Marietta, so charming a girl, could not but make a good
marriage. Samuel was doing well in his position with the railroad
company; Benjamin was studying to be a lawyer and David was to be sent
to West Point. He liked them for their familiar, sterling worth. And
they all treated him as the destined husband of Angela. By the end of
his stay he had become as much en rapport with the family as if he had
known it all his life.

Before going back to New York he had stopped in Chicago, where he had
seen Howe and Mathews grinding away at their old tasks, and then for a
few days in Alexandria, where he found his father busy about his old
affairs. Sewing machines were still being delivered by him in person,
and the long roads of the country were as briskly traversed by his light
machine-carrying buggy as in his earliest days. Eugene saw him now as
just a little futile, and yet he admired him, his patience, his
industry. The brisk sewing machine agent was considerably impressed by
his son's success, and was actually trying to take an interest in art.
One evening coming home from the post office he pointed out a street
scene in Alexandria as a subject for a painting. Eugene knew that art
had only been called to his