ey for the first time in his life, he had made use of all the
resources with which strange and exciting cities could furnish him to
get back his zest in light-heartedness. The result was not in pleasure,
but in disgust, and a horror of himself that grew. It grew from the
beginning, like some giant poisonous weed. It grew while he was in
Chicago; it grew with each further stage of his journey--in St. Louis,
in Cincinnati, in Los Angeles. It was in Los Angeles that he had
received Billy Cheever's letter with the news of Rosie's mad leap, and
he knew for a certainty that the only thing to be done was to turn his
face eastward. Whatever happened, and whoever suffered, he must redeem
himself. Redemption had become for him a need more urgent than food,
more vital than life. Though he didn't use the word, though his terms
were simple and boyish and slangy, Lois could see that his stress was
that which sent pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher, and drove Judas to go
and hang himself. Redemption lay in marrying Rosie, and restoring his
honor, and bringing the Claude who might have been back to life. Indeed,
it was difficult to tell at times which of the two was slain--whether
the Claude who might have been, or the other Claude--so distraught and
involved were his appeals. But beyond marrying Rosie and keeping his
word--being a gentleman, as he expressed it--his outlook didn't extend.
"Any damn thing that liked could happen" when that atoning act had been
accomplished.

* * * * *

There were so many repetitions in his turns of thought that Lois ended
by following them no more than listlessly. Not that she had ceased to be
interested, but her mind was occupied with other phases of the drama.
She remembered, what she had so often heard, that in the Mastermans
there was this extraordinary strain of idealism of which no one could
foresee the turn it would take. She knew the traditions of the
great-grandfather whose heart had broken on finding that America was not
the regenerated land he hoped for. Tales were still current in the
village of old Dr. Masterman, his son, who through sheer confidence in
his fellow-men never paid any one he owed and never collected money from
any one who owed it to him. Archie Masterman, in the next generation,
was supposed to have taken the altruistic tendency by the throat in
himself and choked it down; but Uncle Sim was a byword of eccentric
goodness throughout the countryside.