dark little thing, lying still in her pain,
with the bewildered look of a wounded animal....

Not long after this incident of Mr. Weill's damage suit I obtained a
more or less definite promotion by the departure of Larry Weed. He had
suddenly developed a weakness of the lungs. Mr. Watling got him a place
in Denver, and paid his expenses west.

The first six or seven years I spent in the office of Wading, Fowndes
and Ripon were of importance to my future career, but there is little
to relate of them. I was absorbed not only in learning law, but in
acquiring that esoteric knowledge at which I have hinted--not to be
had from my seniors and which I was convinced was indispensable to
a successful and lucrative practice. My former comparison of the
organization of our city to a picture puzzle wherein the dominating
figures become visible only after long study is rather inadequate. A
better analogy would be the human anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were
the brains; the financial and industrial interests the body, helpless
without us; the City Hall politicians, the stomach that must continually
be fed. All three, law, politics and business, were interdependent,
united by a nervous system too complex to be developed here. In these
years, though I worked hard and often late, I still found time for
convivialities, for social gaieties, yet little by little without
realizing the fact, I was losing zest for the companionship of my former
intimates. My mind was becoming polarized by the contemplation of
one object, success, and to it human ties were unconsciously being
sacrificed.

Tom Peters began to feel this, even at a time when I believed
myself still to be genuinely fond of him. Considering our respective
temperaments in youth, it is curious that he should have been the first
to fall in love and marry. One day he astonished me by announcing his
engagement to Susan Blackwood.

"That ends the liquor, Hughie," he told me, beamingly. "I promised her
I'd eliminate it."

He did eliminate it, save for mild relapses on festive occasions. A more
seemingly incongruous marriage could scarcely be imagined, and yet it
was a success from the start. From a slim, silent, self-willed girl
Susan had grown up into a tall, rather rawboned and energetic young
woman. She was what we called in those days "intellectual," and had
gone in for kindergartens, and after her marriage she turned out to be
excessively domestic; practising her theories, wi