is the future and the things to be which count."

"The things to be--yes," the Duchess said and knew that he was drawing
near the thing he had to say.

"I suppose I was born a dogged sort of devil," he went on almost in a
monotone. "The fact did not manifest itself to me until I came to the
time when--all the rest of me dropped into a bottomless gulf. That
perhaps describes it. I found myself suddenly standing on the edge of
it. And youth, and future, and belief in the use of hoping and real
enjoyment of things dropped into the blackness and were gone while I
looked on. If I had not been born a dogged devil I should have blown my
brains out. If I had been born gentler or kinder or more patient I
should perhaps have lived it down and found there was something left. A
man's way of facing things depends upon the kind of thing he was born. I
went on living _without_--the rest of myself. I closed my mouth and not
only my mouth but my life--as far as other men and women were concerned.
When I found an interest stirring in me I shut another door--that was
all. Whatsoever went on did it behind a shut door."

"But there were things which went on?" the Duchess gently suggested.

"In a hidden way--yes. That is what I am coming to. When I first saw
Mrs. Gareth-Lawless sitting under her tree--" He suddenly stopped. "No,"
harshly, "I need not put it into words to _you_." Then a pause as if for
breath. "She had a way of lifting her eyes as a very young angel
might--she had a quivering spirit of a smile--and soft, deep curled
corners to her mouth. You saw the same things in the old photograph you
bought. The likeness was--Oh! it was hellish that such a resemblance
could be! In less than half an hour after she spoke to me I had shut
another door. But I was obliged to go and _look_ at her again and again.
The resemblance drew me. By the time her husband died I knew her well
enough to be sure what would happen. Some man would pick her up and
throw her aside--and then some one else. She could have held nothing
long. She would have passed from one hand to another until she was
tossed into the gutter and swept away--quivering spirit of a smile and
all of it. I could not have shut any door on that. I prevented it--and
kept her clean--by shutting doors right and left. I have watched over
her. At times it has bored me frightfully. But after a year or
so--behind another door I had shut the child."

"Robin? I had sometimes thought so," said