o doubt some of them consciously enjoy the contrast in their two
selves--the one as seen abroad and the other as understood at home.
But a wifeless, childless man--wandering at large on the heart's
bleak common--has much the same reason to smile on all that he has
to smile on any: there is no domestic enclosure for him: his
affections must embrace humanity.

As he strolled through the rooms, then, in his appealing way,
seeking whom he could attach himself to, he came upon her seated in
a doorway connecting two rooms. She sat alone on a short sofa,
possibly by design, her train so arranged that he must step over it
if he advanced--the only being in the world that he hated. In the
embarrassment of turning his back upon her or of trampling her
train, he hesitated; smiling with lowered eyelids she motioned him
to a seat by her side.

"What a vivacious, agreeable old woman," he soliloquized with
enthusiasm as he was driven home that night, sitting in the middle
of the carriage cushions with one arm swung impartially through the
strap on each side. "And she has invited me to Sunday evening
supper. Me!--after all these years--in that house! I'll not go."

But he went.

"I'll not go again," he declared as he reached home that night and
thought it over. "She is a bad woman."

But the following Sunday evening he reached for his hat and cane:
"I must go somewhere," he complained resentfully. "The saints of
my generation are enjoying the saint's rest. Nobody is left but a
few long-lived sinners, of whom I am a great part. They are the
best I can find, and I suppose they are the best I deserve."

Those who live long miss many. Without exception his former
associates at the bar had been summoned to appear before the Judge
who accepts no bribe.

The ablest of the middle-aged lawyers often hurried over to consult
him in difficult cases. All of them could occasionally listen
while he, praiser of a bygone time, recalled the great period of
practice when he was the favorite criminal lawyer of the first
families, defending their sons against the commonwealth which he
always insisted was the greater criminal. The young men about
town knew him and were ready to chat with him on street
corners--but never very long at a time. In his old law offices he
could spend part of every day, guiding or guying his nephew Barbee,
who had just begun to practice. But when all his social resources
were reckoned, his days contained gr