the world "but as the world," and consequently always poor. Their ways
were rougher ways. Their women had to work to trim the edges of their
plainer surroundings with the alleviating prettinesses the Hamiltons
cast aside with every changing style. And Anne, coming home from Europe
one summer, where she had not only seen wonder and beauty, already
familiar to her--for she was a young lady then--and where he knew she
had met men and women whose names were trumpet calls in his
ears--singled him out, in his shyness and obscurity, and offered him the
key to the fulfilment of his dreams. Education, travel, the life of
books--all were in her hand, the potential fruit of her father's doting
affection for her, and all were to be his. What could have inspired her
with so wholesale and fantastic a philanthropy? He could never
adequately guess, and he was no nearer doing it now than in the old
bewildering days when the Hesperidean apples were dropping over him and
he was, from some shy instinct, dodging to avoid them. And the reason he
had never guessed and never could guess was that he left out of all the
data at his hand the one first moving factor: that he was a beautiful
youth and Anne had imperiously loved him and had never ceased to love.

As he sat there, the pen lifted, his mind going back over the things
that had led him away from adventure into wool, and were now leading him
as far from wool as might be, he was tempted. What if, in spite of Nan,
he should risk it and tell Dick, once for all, why he was going away,
make it clear so there should be no after-persuasions, no clutter of
half understanding? He was tired of thinking about his life as a life.
The temptation to such morose musing had come upon him in the last six
months, and once yielded to, he felt the egotistical disease of it
through his very blood and bones. If he were Catholic, he could confess
and get rid of it. He was not Catholic, only pagan, the natural man. The
Church had a wisdom of her own. All her rites and ceremonies found their
root in something salutary for the human mind. Confession was salutary.
You might not be absolved, but if you were pagan you could believe that
the very act of it absolved you. Nan said Dick never would understand.
So much the better. Let him carry off the burden of it. If he
understood, he'd see the extreme sacredness of a confidence entrusted to
him. If he didn't, he'd hide it as a thing you'd better say as little
about as