secure a charming
companion. Why should he not avail himself of it? Amid the glitter and
gayety of his surroundings in the city, this temptation grew stronger
and stronger. Miss Abby's sharp speech recurred to him. He was becoming
"a fair counterfeit" of the men he had once despised. Then came a new
form of temptation. What power this wealth would give him! How much good
he could accomplish with it!

When the temptation grew too overpowering he left his office and went
down into the country. It always did him good to go there. To be there
was like a plunge in a cool, limpid pool. He had been so long in the
turmoil and strife of the struggle for success--for wealth; had been so
wholly surrounded by those who strove as he strove, tearing and
trampling and rending those who were in their way, that he had almost
lost sight of the life that lay outside of the dust and din of that
arena. He had almost forgotten that life held other rewards than riches.
He had forgotten the calm and tranquil region that stretched beyond the
moil and anguish of the strife for gain.

Here his father walked with him again, calm, serene, and elevated, his
thoughts high above all commercial matters, ranging the fields of lofty
speculation with statesmen, philosophers, and poets, holding up to his
gaze again lofty ideals; practising, without a thought of reward, the
very gospel of universal gentleness and kindness.

There his mother, too, moved in spirit once more beside him with her
angelic smile, breathing the purity of heaven. How far away it seemed
from that world in which he had been living!--as far as they were from
the worldlings who made it.

Curiously, when he was in New York he found himself under the allurement
of Alice Lancaster. When he was in the country he found that he was in
love with Lois Huntington.

It was this that mystified him and worried him. He believed--that is, he
almost believed--that Alice Lancaster would marry him. His friends
thought that she would. Several of them had told him so. Many of them
acted on this belief. And this had something to do with his retirement.
As much as he liked Alice Lancaster, as clearly as he felt how but for
one fact it would have suited that they should marry, one fact changed
everything: he was not in love with her.

He was in love with a young girl who had never given him a thought
except as a sort of hereditary friend. Turning from one door at which
the light of happiness had shone