her.

XI

It was not difficult for Davenant to ascribe his lightness of heart, on
leaving Tory Hill, to satisfaction in getting rid of his superfluous
money, since he had some reason to fear that the possession of it was no
great blessing. To a man with little instinct for luxury and no spending
tastes, twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year was an income far
outstripping his needs. It was not, however, in excess of his desires,
for he would gladly have set up an establishment and cut a dash if he
had known how. He admired the grand style in living, not so much as a
matter of display, because presumably it stood for all sorts of
mysterious refinements for which he possessed the yearning without the
initiation. The highest flight he could take by his own unaided efforts
was in engaging the best suite of rooms in the best hotel, when he was
quite content with his dingy old lodgings; in driving in taxicabs, when
the tram-car would have suited him just as well, and ordering champagne,
when he would have preferred some commoner beverage. Fully aware of the
insufficiency of this method of reaching a higher standard, he practised
it only because it offered the readiest means he could find of
straining upward. He was sure that with a wife who knew the arts of
elegance to lead the way his scent for following would be keen enough;
but between him and the acquisition of this treasure there lay the
memory of the haughty young creature who had, in the metaphor with which
he was most familiar, "turned him down."

But it was not the fact that he had more money than he needed of which
he was afraid; it was rather the perception that the possibility of
indulging himself--coupled with what he conceived to be a kind of duty
in doing it--was sapping his vigor. All through the second year of his
holiday he had noticed in himself the tendency of the big,
strong-fibered animal to be indolent and overfed. On the principle laid
down by Emerson that every man is as lazy as he dares to be he got into
the way of sleeping late, of lounging in the public places of hotels,
and smoking too many cigars. With a little encouragement he could have
contracted the incessant cocktail and Scotch-and-soda habits of some of
his traveling compatriots.

He excused these weaknesses on the ground that when he had returned to
Boston, and got back to his ordinary round of work and exercise, they
would vanish, without having to be overcome; and yet the