e who grahsp the great Basic Truths in the Science of
Being--" and just as the Captain was about to open his mouth to invite
Ahab Wright to his party, plumb came the ghastly consciousness to him
that the Van Dorns were not on his list. For the Van Dorns, however
securely they were entrenched socially among the new people who had no
part in the town's old quarrel with Tom, however the oil and gas and
smelter people and the coal magnates may have received the Van
Dorns--still they were under the social ban of the only social Harvey
that Captain Morton knew. So as a man falling from a balloon gets his
balance, the Captain gasped as he came up from his low bow and said:

"Madam, I says to myself just now as I looks over to that elm tree
yonder," he pointed to the place where Kenyon and Lila were sitting,
"soon we'll be having the fourth generation here in Harvey, and I says,
that will interest Tom! An 'y gory, ma'am, as I saw you sitting here, I
says as it was well in my mind, 'Here's Tom's lady love, and I'll just
go over and pass my congratulations on to Tom through the apple of his
eye, as you may say, and not bother him and the young man around the
corner there in their boss trade, eh?' What say?" He was flushed and
red, and he did not know exactly where to stop, but it was out--and
after a few sparring sentences, he broke away from the clutch of his
bungling intrusion and was gone. But as the Captain left the couple at
the table, the spell was broken. Life had intruded, and Ahab rose
hastily and went his way.

Margaret Van Dorn sat looking out at a dreary world. Even the lovers by
the elm tree did not quicken her pulse. Scarcely more did they interest
her than her vapid adventure with Ahab Wright. All romantic adventure,
personal or vicarious, was as ashes on her lips. But emotion was not all
dead in her. As she gazed at Lila and Kenyon, Margaret wondered if her
husband could see the pair. Her first emotional reaction was a gloating
sense that he would be boiling with humiliation and rage when he saw his
child so obviously and publicly, even if unconsciously, adoring an
Adams. So she exulted in the Van Dorn discomfiture. As her first
spiteful impulse wore away, a sense of desolation overcame Margaret Van
Dorn. Probably she had no regrets that she had abandoned Kenyon. For
years she had nursed a daily horror that the door which hid her secret
might swing open, but that horror was growing stale. She felt that the
door w