onths far from the hysteria of tittering electric bells, the brassy
honk-honk of automobiles, the clang of surface cars and the screech of
their wheels on the rails, multiply your period of absence by ten, add a
certain amount of desert temperament, and you will vaguely understand how
the red corpuscles were raising rebellion in Jack's artery walls on the
morning of his journey's end. From the ferryboat on the dull-green bosom
of the river he first renewed his memory of the spectral and forbidding
abysses and pinnacles of New York. Here time is everything; here man has
done his mightiest in contriving masses to imitate the architectural
chaos of genesis. A mantle of chill, smoky mist formed the dome of
heaven, in which a pale, suffused, yellowish spot alone bespoke the
existence of a sun in the universe.

In keeping with his promise to Dr. Bennington he had wired to his father,
naming his train; and in a few minutes Wingfield, Sr. and Wingfield, Jr.
would meet for the first time in five years. Jack was conscious of a
faster beating of his heart and a feeling of awesome expectancy as the
crowd debouched from the ferryboat. At the exit to the street a big
limousine was waiting. The gilt initials on the door left no doubt for
whom it had been sent. But there was no one to meet him, no one after his
long absence except a chauffeur and a footman, who glanced at Jack
sharply. After the exchange of a corroborative nod between them the
footman advanced.

"If you please, Mr. Wingfield," he said, taking Jack's suit case.

"What would Jim Galway think of me now!" thought Jack. He put his head
inside the car cautiously. "Another box!" he thought, this time aloud.

"You have the check for it, sir?" asked the footman, thinking that Jack
was using the English of the mother island for trunk.

"No. That's all my baggage."

In the tapering, cut-glass vase between the two front window-panels of
the "box" was a rose--a symbol of the luxury of the twenty millions,
evidently put there regularly every morning by direction of their master.
Its freshness and color appealed to Jack. He took it out and pressed it
to his nostrils.

"Just needs the morning sun and the dew to be perfect," he said to the
amazed attendants; "and I will walk if you will take the suit case to
the house."

He kept the rose, which he twirled in his fingers as he sauntered across
town, now pausing at curb corners to glance back in thoughtful survey,
now looking al