r be a bat in a belfry. Goodbye; I've had a pleasant
call, as usual, and you've been a real sister to me in my trouble.
You shall have the twenty dollars a month. Jack's clothes are in that
valise, and there'll be a trunk tomorrow. Susanna said she'd write and
let you know her whereabouts."

So saying, John Hathaway strode down the path, closed the gate behind
him, and walked rapidly along the road that led to the station. It was
a quiet road and he met few persons. He had neither dressed nor shaved
since the day before; his face was haggard, his heart was like a lump of
lead in his breast. Of what use to go to the empty house in Farnham when
he could stifle his misery by a night with his friends?

No, he could not do that, either! The very thought of them brought a
sense of satiety and disgust; the craving for what they would give him
would come again in time, no doubt, but for the moment he was sick
to the very soul of all they stood for. The feeling of complete
helplessness, of desertion, of being alone in mid-ocean without a sail
or a star in sight, mounted and swept over him. Susanna had been his
sail, his star, although he had never fully realized it, and he had
cut himself adrift from her pure, steadfast love, blinding himself with
cheap and vulgar charms.

The next train to Farnham was not due for an hour. His steps faltered;
he turned into a clump of trees by the wayside and flung himself on the
ground to cry like a child, he who had not shed a tear since he was a
boy of ten. If Susanna could have seen that often longed-for burst of
despair and remorse, that sudden recognition of his sins against himself
and her, that gush of penitent tears, her heart might have softened
once again; a flicker of flame might have lighted the ashes of her dying
love; she might have taken his head on her shoulder, and said, "Never
mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over again!"

Matters did not look any brighter for John the next week, for his senior
partner, Joel Atterbury, requested him to withdraw from the firm as soon
as matters could be legally arranged. He was told that he had not been
doing, nor earning, his share; that his way of living during the
year just past had not been any credit to "the concern," and that he,
Atterbury, sympathized too heartily with Mrs. John Hathaway to take any
pleasure in doing business with Mr. John.

John's remnant of pride, completely humbled by this last withdrawal of
confidence,