old closed
about him, had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and tighter.
Until now, he could not remember a time when he had not been dreading
something. Even when he was a little boy, it was always there--behind
him, or before, or on either side. There had always been the shadowed
corner, the dark place into which he dared not look, but from which
something seemed always to be watching him--and Paul had done things that
were not pretty to watch, he knew.

But now he had a curious sense of relief, as though he had at last thrown
down the gauntlet to the thing in the corner.

Yet it was but a day since he had been sulking in the traces; but
yesterday afternoon that he had been sent to the bank with Denny &
Carson's deposit, as usual--but this time he was instructed to leave the
book to be balanced. There was above two thousand dollars in checks, and
nearly a thousand in the bank notes which he had taken from the book and
quietly transferred to his pocket. At the bank he had made out a new
deposit slip. His nerves had been steady enough to permit of his
returning to the office, where he had finished his work and asked for a
full day's holiday tomorrow, Saturday, giving a perfectly reasonable
pretext. The bank book, he knew, would not be returned before Monday or
Tuesday, and his father would be out of town for the next week. From the
time he slipped the bank notes into his pocket until he boarded the night
train for New York, he had not known a moment's hesitation.

How astonishingly easy it had all been; here he was, the thing done; and
this time there would be no awakening, no figure at the top of the
stairs. He watched the snow flakes whirling by his window until he fell
asleep.

When he awoke, it was four o'clock in the afternoon. He bounded up with a
start; one of his precious days gone already! He spent nearly an hour in
dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefully in the mirror.
Everything was quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he had
always wanted to be.

When he went downstairs, Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth avenue
toward the Park. The snow had somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen's
wagons were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter twilight; boys
in woollen mufflers were shovelling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages
made fine spots of colour against the white street. Here and there on the
corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, again