he
leading architects in New York City. He had worked hard the past
twenty years, but perhaps it was not so much because he had yearned to
go forward as it was to keep him from thinking too much on certain
closed incidents of his life.

At times, like this morning, he found himself trying to piece together
what his father, Martin S. Davies, would have told him had he not died
with the words on his lips. It was only four years back. The elder
Davies had been stricken suddenly while Carrington was in the West, and
a wire had brought the son on the first train. He was told, on
arrival, that the father was desperately ill; that he had held to the
weakening thread of life and consciousness because of a strong-willed
desire to impart some vital information to his son.

However, when Carrington Davies had been led into the sick room, the
father, overcome with emotion, died from the shock, his fingers
clutching the arms of his son, his eyes set upon his son's face, and
the words: "Your wife--I--she's at----" trailing off into the darkness
with him.

For days after, when all his father's effects had been painfully gone
over, Davies had sat in frenzied study. It had been years since he had
given serious thought to the brief, tragic romance of his college days.
He had suffered keenly for a time, but his father's counsel had held
weight with him, held weight even though he could never forget the
girl, nor that day of days when she had plighted her faith in him with
the dainty crimson bow and he had gone out on the field of battle
feeling like a gladiator. A silly, lovesick fool he had been, perhaps,
on that glorious day; but no incident in his entire life thereafter
quite came up to this.

When he had become older and more mature, when he had reached an age at
which he could better judge the sort of woman he should marry, Davies,
as his father said he would, had come upon the discovery that all
feminine creatures were hopeless bores. Thus his unattached state grew
to be recognized as perennial, and whatever romance he enjoyed came to
him through the cultivated channels of his memory.

How angry his father had been when he had found that Davies had
secretly married! The boy had written home for the family blessing and
had received, by return mail, the family curse. Carrington Davies came
of too good and wealthy a stock to have been inveigled into marrying a
nobody, his proud parents told him. Why, the girl was an orp