hing that belied the harshness of her laugh.

"You're just a kid," she told me. "Say, you get along home, and tell
your mamma I sent you."

Whereupon I departed in a state of humiliation and self-reproach I had
never before known, wandering about aimlessly for a long time. When at
length I arrived at home, late for supper, my mother's solicitude only
served to deepen my pain. She went to the kitchen herself to see if my
mince-pie were hot, and served me with her own hands. My father remained
at his place at the head of the table while I tried to eat, smiling
indulgently at her ministrations.

"Oh, a little hard work won't hurt him, Sarah," he said. "When I was his
age I often worked until eleven o'clock and never felt the worse for it.
Business must be pretty good, eh, Hugh?"

I had never seen him in a more relaxing mood, a more approving one.
My mother sat down beside me.... Words seem useless to express the
complicated nature of my suffering at that moment,--my remorse, my
sense of deception, of hypocrisy,--yes, and my terror. I tried to talk
naturally, to answer my father's questions about affairs at the store,
while all the time my eyes rested upon the objects of the room, familiar
since childhood. Here were warmth, love, and safety. Why could I not be
content with them, thankful for them? What was it in me that drove me
from these sheltering walls out into the dark places? I glanced at my
father. Had he ever known these wild, destroying desires? Oh, if I only
could have confided in him! The very idea of it was preposterous. Such
placidity as theirs would never understand the nature of my temptations,
and I pictured to myself their horror and despair at my revelation. In
imagination I beheld their figures receding while I drifted out to sea,
alone. Would the tide--which was somehow within me--carry me out and
out, in spite of all I could do?

"Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core...."

I did not shirk my tasks at the store, although I never got over the
feeling that a fine instrument was being employed where a coarser one
would have done equally well. There were moments when I was almost
overcome by surges of self-commiseration and of impotent anger: for
instance, I was once driven out of a shop by an incensed German grocer
whom I had asked to settle a long-standing account. Yet the days passed,
the daily grind absorbed my energies, and when I was