searching?" I asked.

"If that is so," Nancy objected, "then all the other elements of our
lives are sadly out of tune with it. Even the most felicitous union of
the sexes demands sacrifice, an adjustment of wills, and these are the
very things we balk at; and the trouble with our entire class in this
country is that we won't acknowledge any responsibility, there's no
sacrifice in our eminence, we have no sense of the whole."

"Where did you get all these ideas?" I demanded.

She laughed.

"Well," she admitted, "I've been thrashing around a little; and I've read
some of the moderns, you know. Do you remember my telling you I didn't
agree with them? and now this thing has come on me like a judgment. I've
caught their mania for liberty, for self-realization--whatever they call
it--but their remedies are vague, they fail to convince me that
individuals achieve any quality by just taking what they want, regardless
of others."....

I was unable to meet this argument, and the result was that when I was
away from her I too began to "thrash around" among the books in a vain
search for a radical with a convincing and satisfying philosophy. Thus we
fly to literature in crises of the heart! There was no lack of writers
who sought to deal--and deal triumphantly with the very situation in
which I was immersed. I marked many passages, to read them over to Nancy,
who was interested, but who accused me of being willing to embrace any
philosophy, ancient or modern, that ran with the stream of my desires. It
is worth recording that the truth of this struck home. On my way back to
the city I reflected that, in spite of my protests against Maude's
going--protests wholly sentimental and impelled by the desire to avoid
giving pain on the spot--I had approved of her departure because I didn't
want her. On the other hand I had to acknowledge if I hadn't wanted
Nancy, or rather, if I had become tired of her, I should have been
willing to endorse her scruples.... It was not a comforting thought.

One morning when I was absently opening the mail I found at my office I
picked up a letter from Theodore Watling, written from a seaside resort
in Maine, the contents of which surprised and touched me, troubled me,
and compelled me to face a situation with which I was wholly unprepared
to cope. He announced that this was to be his last term in the Senate. He
did not name the trouble his physician had discovered, but he had been
warned that he must