long as he never suffers himself to feel one touch
of tenderness towards wife or child, towards kith or kin, towards
stranger or towards friend, so long will he succeed and prosper in his
dealings--so long will all this world's affairs go well with him; and he
will grow each day richer and greater and more powerful. But if ever he
let one kindly thought for living thing come into his heart, in that
moment all his plans and schemes will topple down about his ears; and
from that hour his name will be despised by men, and then forgotten.

And the man treasures up these words, for he is an ambitious man, and
wealth and fame and power are the sweetest things in all the world to
him. A woman loves him and dies, thirsting for a loving look from him;
children's footsteps creep into his life and steal away again, old faces
fade and new ones come and go.

But never a kindly touch of his hand rests on any living thing; never a
kindly word comes from his lips; never a kindly thought springs from his
heart. And in all his doings fortune favours him.

The years pass by, and at last there is left to him only one thing that
he need fear--a child's small, wistful face. The child loves him, as the
woman, long ago, had loved him, and her eyes follow him with a hungry,
beseeching look. But he sets his teeth, and turns away from her.

The little face grows thin, and one day they come to him where he sits
before the keyboard of his many enterprises, and tell him she is dying.
He comes and stands beside the bed, and the child's eyes open and turn
towards him; and, as he draws nearer, her little arms stretch out towards
him, pleading dumbly. But the man's face never changes, and the little
arms fall feebly back upon the tumbled coverlet, and the wistful eyes
grow still, and a woman steps softly forward, and draws the lids down
over them; then the man goes back to his plans and schemes.

But in the night, when the great house is silent, he steals up to the
room where the child still lies, and pushes back the white, uneven sheet.

"Dead--dead," he mutters. Then he takes the tiny corpse up in his arms,
and holds it tight against his breast, and kisses the cold lips, and the
cold cheeks, and the little, cold, stiff hands.

And at that point my story becomes impossible, for I dream that the dead
child lies always beneath the sheet in that quiet room, and that the
little face never changes, nor the limbs decay.

I puzzle about this for