conscience. The sum obtained from the publishers by Flamel's
adroit manipulations and opportunely transferred to Dinslow's successful
venture, already yielded a return which, combined with Glennard's
professional earnings, took the edge of compulsion from their way of
living, making it appear the expression of a graceful preference for
simplicity. It was the mitigated poverty which can subscribe to a review
or two and have a few flowers on the dinner-table. And already in
a small way Glennard was beginning to feel the magnetic quality of
prosperity. Clients who had passed his door in the hungry days sought
it out now that it bore the name of a successful man. It was understood
that a small inheritance, cleverly invested, was the source of his
fortune; and there was a feeling that a man who could do so well for
himself was likely to know how to turn over other people's money.

But it was in the more intimate reward of his wife's happiness that
Glennard tasted the full flavor of success. Coming out of conditions so
narrow that those he offered her seemed spacious, she fitted into her
new life without any of those manifest efforts at adjustment that are
as sore to a husband's pride as the critical rearrangement of the bridal
furniture. She had given him, instead, the delicate pleasure of watching
her expand like a sea-creature restored to its element, stretching out
the atrophied tentacles of girlish vanity and enjoyment to the rising
tide of opportunity. And somehow--in the windowless inner cell of his
consciousness where self-criticism cowered--Glennard's course seemed
justified by its merely material success. How could such a crop of
innocent blessedness have sprung from tainted soil?

Now he had the injured sense of a man entrapped into a disadvantageous
bargain. He had not known it would be like this; and a dull anger
gathered at his heart. Anger against whom? Against his wife, for not
knowing what he suffered? Against Flamel, for being the unconscious
instrument of his wrong-doing? Or against that mute memory to which his
own act had suddenly given a voice of accusation? Yes, that was it;
and his punishment henceforth would be the presence, the unescapable
presence, of the woman he had so persistently evaded. She would always
be there now. It was as though he had married her instead of the other.
It was what she had always wanted--to be with him--and she had gained
her point at last....

He sprang up, as thoug