abit, and so could evil. As a
man thought, so he was. For all of his childhood, and for the last ten
years, Dick's mental habits had been right; his environment had been
love, his teaching responsibility. Even if the door opened, then, there
was only the evil thinking of two or three reckless years to combat,
and the door might never open. Happiness, Lauler had said, would keep it
closed, and Dick was happy.

When at five o'clock the nurse came in with a thermometer he was asleep
in his chair, his mouth slightly open, and snoring valiantly. Hearing
Dick in the lower hall, she went to the head of the stairs, her finger
to her lips.

Dick nodded and went into the office. The afternoon mail was lying
there, and he began mechanically to open it. His thoughts were
elsewhere.

Now that he had taken the step he had so firmly determined not to take,
certain things, such as Clare Rossiter's story, David's uneasiness, his
own doubts, no longer involved himself alone, nor even Elizabeth and
himself. They had become of vital importance to her family.

There was no evading the issue. What had once been only his own
misfortune, mischance, whatever it was, had now become of vital
importance to an entire group of hitherto disinterested people. He would
have to put his situation clearly before them and let them judge. And he
would have to clarify that situation for them and for himself.

He had had a weak moment or two. He knew that some men, many men, went
to marriage with certain reticences, meaning to wipe the slate clean and
begin again. He had a man's understanding of such concealments. But he
did not for a moment compare his situation with theirs, even when the
temptation to seize his happiness was strongest. No mere misconduct,
but something hidden and perhaps terrible lay behind David's strange
new attitude. Lay, too, behind the break in his memory which he tried to
analyze with professional detachment. The mind in such cases set up
its defensive machinery of forgetfulness, not against the trivial but
against the unbearable.

For the last day or two he had faced the fact that, not only must he use
every endeavor to revive his past, but that such revival threatened with
cruelty and finality to separate him from the present.

With an open and unread letter in his hand he stared about the office.
This place was his; he had fought for it, worked for it. He had an
almost physical sense of unseen hands reaching out to drag him