"
Edith gave a worried little sigh. "I'll be so glad," she added, "when we
get that place in Morristown. We'll want you out there often, and for good
long visits too. You may even find you'll care to try staying there with us
for a while."

Roger scowled and thanked her. She had given him a shock of alarm.

"So she thinks that Deborah will find the housekeeping too hard," he
reflected anxiously. And as he walked home with his daughter, he kept
glancing at her face, which for all its look of quiet had so much tensity
beneath. She had packed her life so full of school. What if she wanted to
give up their home? "She'll try, of course, she'll try her best--but she'll
find it too much of an added strain." And again he felt that sickening
dread. Deborah said nothing. He felt as though they had drifted apart.

And at night in his bed, as Roger stared up at the beetling cliff of
apartment windows just outside, drearily he asked himself how it would feel
to live like that.

CHAPTER V

One afternoon a few days later Roger was riding in the park. He rode
"William," a large lazy cob who as he advanced in age had so subtly and
insidiously slackened his pace from a trot to a jog that Roger barely
noticed how slowly he was riding. As he rode along he liked to watch the
broad winding bridle path with its bobbing procession of riders that kept
appearing before him under the tall spreading trees. Though he knew
scarcely anyone by name, he was a familiar figure here and he recognized
scores of faces. To many men he nodded at passing, and to not a few
alluring young dames, ardent creatures with bright eyes who gave him smiles
of greeting, Roger gravely raised his hat. One was "The Silver Lady" in a
Broadway musical show, but he thought she was "one of the Newport crowd."
He liked to make shrewd guesses like that. There were so many kinds of
people here. There were stout anxious ladies riding for figures and lean
morose gentlemen riding for health. There were joyous care-free girls,
chatting and laughing merrily. There were some gallant foreigners, and
there were riding masters, and Roger could not tell them apart. There were
mad boys from the Squadron who rode at a furious canter, and there were
groups of children, eager and flushed, excited and gay, with stolid grooms
behind them. The path in several places ran close beside the main road of
the park, and with the coming of the dusk this road took on deep purple
hues and glist