frankly to himself, in part of his own
making, despite even the ugly facts surrounding the baby's death,
Brenton still loved Katharine. Moreover, he still had hours of being
desperately lonely. Back of it all, though, was his strict adherence to
the letter of his marriage bond. Whatever came between them, Katharine
was still his wife; his home was always hers. Whatever other duties lay
ahead of him, one was constant: to hold himself true to this avowed
allegiance, to win her back from what seemed to him a passing madness;
or else, that failing, to take her as she was and forget everything
else besides the one great fact of her wifehood, of her recent
motherhood of their dead baby boy. If he held firm to that, and to some
other things, the future might yet offer untold good to them.
Meanwhile, he would be ready for any event that came.

The other things to which Brenton, all that summer, was holding firmly,
had come out of his association with Reed Opdyke. Opdyke, in all
terseness, had summed up man's whole duty: to play out the game
uprightly, and, out of loyalty to an all-wise Creator, not to lose
touch with the present chance in trying to see too many moves ahead.
The remoter parts of life, so long as they remained remote, would take
care of themselves. And, in the same way, the problems of the
after-life, its meanings, could be left unsolved, if not unstudied,
until the time came when one could take them in a nearer view. Properly
lived, life was too busy to admit of many questions, anyway. Always
there were so many useful things to be done that scanty time remained
for over much philosophizing. And, as for the man knocked down and out,
whether by spiritual doubting, or black powder, it was for him to
choose whether he would lie on his back and wallow limply in the dust
of his emotions, or stiffen himself, ready for new effort.

All through the blazing heat of the worst June ever recorded; all
through the chill of a cold, wet July, Opdyke preached his doctrine
with insistence, preached it in season and out. While he preached, he
practised; often, it must be confessed, a good deal to his own
detriment. The lift and the rolling chair and the down-town office were
still in a future which every one, including Reed himself, knew to be
increasingly nebulous. However, he and Duncan were building up no small
amount of reputation in their work; and, while the loosened screw of
which Opdyke had complained to Olive was throwin