oblivious of the mere
external details of life. To live at all had been for him a matter of
fine moral courage, and his slight, delicate emaciated, yet dauntless,
figure was in itself the expression of a resolute will to endure as well
as to resist. When a man has faced death at close range for fifteen
years he is, in a measure, bound to become either indifferent satyr or
partial saint, and even in the extremity of his first revolt his
personal ideal had stood, like the angel with the flaming sword, between
Adams and the quagmire of bodily materialism. He was not, perhaps, as
yet even so much as a deficient stoic, but he had wrung from suffering a
certain high loyalty to human fellowship and a half humorous, if wholly
gallant, determination to keep fast at any cost until the very end. Why
he had made the fight he did not ask himself, nor could he have
answered. His ambition, his marriage, even the ordinary sensuous
enjoyments of life, had crumbled as the mythical Dead Sea apples upon
his lips, yet the failure of his own mere individual pursuit of
happiness had in no-wise soured the sweet and finely flavored optimism
of his nature.

The fragrance from the violets worn by a passing woman struck him
presently, and he looked outside of himself almost with a start. Around
him many women were walking briskly under raised umbrellas, and some
showed pretty faces freshened like flowers by the icy rain. He himself
had forgotten the rain, had forgotten even the cold which pierced his
chest, and, suddenly remembering the directions of his physician, he
fastened his overcoat more closely and hastened across the street,
passing rapidly in and out among the moving vehicles until he gained,
over the sloppy crossing, the safety of the opposite sidewalk. Here he
turned in the direction of Madison Avenue and finally, drawing out his
latchkey, entered one of the dingy, flat-faced, utterly conventional
brown houses which make up so large a part of the characterless
complexion of New York life.

The interior was brilliantly lighted, and he was shrinking noiselessly
into his study at the back when he heard his name called from the
drawing-room threshold and saw his wife standing there while she put on
a long white evening cloak over a filmy effect of cream-coloured lace.
She was a small, pretty woman, with a cloud of fluffy, artificially
blonde hair and large, innocent, absolutely blank blue eyes. A year ago
she had resembled, if one might