into the law," he added. "And I intend to stay
in it if I can keep alive. It's a great chance for me--for all of us.
Aren't you at the Law School?"

I nodded. Once more, as his earnest glance fell upon me, came that
suggestion of a subtle, inexplicable link between us; but before I could
reply, steps were heard behind us, and an elderly servant, bareheaded,
was seen coming down the path.

"Are you the reporter?" he demanded somewhat impatiently of Krebs. "If
you want to see Mr. Dome, you'd better come right away. He's going out
for a drive."

For a while, after he had shaken my hand and departed, I stood in the
snow, looking after him....

VIII

On the Wednesday of that same week the news of my father's sudden and
serious illness came to me in a telegram, and by the time I arrived at
home it was too late to see him again alive. It was my first experience
with death, and what perplexed me continually during the following days
was an inability to feel the loss more deeply. When a child, I had been
easily shaken by the spectacle of sorrow. Had I, during recent years, as
a result of a discovery that emotions arising from human relationships
lead to discomfort and suffering, deliberately been forming a shell,
until now I was incapable of natural feelings? Of late I had seemed
closer to my father, and his letters, though formal, had given evidence
of his affection; in his repressed fashion he had made it clear that he
looked forward to the time when I was to practise with him. Why was it
then, as I gazed upon his fine features in death, that I experienced
no intensity of sorrow? What was it in me that would not break down? He
seemed worn and tired, yet I had never thought of him as weary, never
attributed to him any yearning. And now he was released.

I wondered what had been his private thoughts about himself, his
private opinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of
real knowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an
expensive education which had failed to impress upon me the simple,
basic fact that life was struggle; that either development or
retrogression is the fate of all men, that characters are never
completely made, but always in the making. I had merely a disconcerting
glimpse of this truth, with no powers of formulation, as I sat beside my
mother in the bedroom, where every article evoked some childhood scene.
Here was the dent in the walnut foot-board of the bed made,