nged existence.
In his whole life the past had never engrossed him to the immediate
exclusion of the present.

When he had finished his cigar, he rose slowly to his feet, shook
himself with an energetic movement as if to settle his body more
comfortably in his clothes, and went into the hall to put on his
overcoat before going out. Here he was overtaken by a remonstrance from
Wilkins.

"You aren't going to the office, I hope, sir, until you've written those
notes?"

Kemper stared at him silently an instant, one arm still in the sleeve of
the overcoat he was putting on.

"Oh, I say, Wilkins, I'll do them at the club," he replied at last.

Wilkins shook his head with decision written in every line of his
smooth-shaven English profile. He was faithful, he was even
affectionate, but he had been in Kemper's service for fifteen years and
he knew his man.

"You'd better get them off now, sir," he urged in a persuasive voice,
"it won't take you a minute, and unless I post them myself, they are
like to lie over."

"Well, I suppose you'll have your way with me, Wilkins," remarked
Kemper, as he withdrew his arm from his overcoat, which his servant
promptly took from him. "Most people do, you know." Then he turned back
into his sitting-room and placing himself at his desk, took up his pen
and accepted three invitations out of the round dozen he had to answer.
This accomplished, the discreet Wilkins gave him his hat and coat and
permitted him to depart rapidly upon his way.

By eleven o'clock he was due at the office of the Confidential Life
Insurance Company, of which he was one of the directors, and as he
walked toward Broadway with his brisk and energetic step, he kept his
mind closely upon the business affairs which were immediately before
him. This peculiar ability to concentrate his whole being upon a single
instant, to apply himself with enthusiasm to the thing beneath his eyes,
was the quality of all others which had worked most not only for his
present worldly success, but for his personal happiness as well. When he
came out of his rooms the brief despondency of the morning had vanished
as utterly as if it had never been, and until his wife's name stared at
him anew from a printed page, it was hardly probable that she would
occur again to his thoughts. A feeling of peace, of perfect charity
pervaded his breast, and had he been asked on the spot for an expression
of his religious creed, he would, perhaps, have ans