could turn his back on the whole
business and give himself up to his own affairs.

He made an effort to recapture his zest in the old game, but after the
passionate interest he had put into the past week the fun was out of it.
Stoughton, Michigan, presented itself as a ramshackled, filthy wooden
town of bar-rooms, eating-rooms, pool-rooms, and unspeakable hotels. The
joys and excitements he had known over such deals as the buying and
selling of the Catapult, the Peppermint, and the Etna mines were as flat
now as the lees of yesternight's feast. "I'm not in love with her," he
kept saying, doggedly, to himself; and yet the thought of leaving Olivia
Guion and her interests to this intrusive stranger, merely because he
was supposed to have a prior claim, was sickening. It was more
sickening still that the Englishman should not only be disposed to take
up all the responsibilities Davenant would be laying down, but seemed
competent to do it.

On the embankment he met Rodney Temple, taking the air after his day in
the Gallery of Fine Arts. He walked slowly, with a stoop, his hands
behind him. Now and then he paused to enjoy the last tints of pink and
purple and dusky saffron mirrored in the reaches of the river or to
watch the swing of some college crew and the swan-like movement of their
long, frail shell.

"Hello! Where are you off to? Home?"

Davenant had not yet raised this question with himself, but now that it
was before him he saw it was worth considering. Home, for the present,
meant Drusilla and Mrs. Temple, with their intuitions and speculations,
their hints and sympathies. He scarcely knew which he dreaded most, the
old lady's inquisitive tenderness or Drusilla's unsparing perspicacity.

"Not home just yet, sir," he had the wit to say. "In fact, I'm walking
in to Boston, and may not be home to dinner. Perhaps you'll tell Mrs.
Temple so when you go in. Then I sha'n't have to 'phone her."

Temple let that pass. "Been up to look at the great man?"

Peter nodded. "Just come from there."

"And what do you make of him?"

"Oh, he's a decent sort."

"Not going to back out, eh?"

"Not at all; just the other way: he wants to step in and take everything
off--off our hands."

"You don't say so. Then he's what you say--a decent sort."

"He's more than that," Davenant heard himself saying, to his own
surprise. "He's a fine specimen of his type, and the type itself--"

"Is superb," the old man concluded. "That's