minutes Overholt tried to concentrate his mind on the little City, but
it was of no use. If he did not think of the Motor, he thought of what
was much worse, for the little streets and models of the familiar places
brought back the cruel memory of happier things so vividly that it was
torment. All his faculties of sensation were tense and vibrating; he
could hear his wife's gentle and happy voice, her young girl's voice,
when he looked at the little bench in the lane where he had asked her to
marry him, and an awful certainty came upon him that he was never to
hear her speak again on this side of the grave; there was the house they
had lived in; from that window he had looked out on a May morning at the
budding trees half an hour after his boy had been born; there, in the
pretty garden, the young mother had sat with her baby in the lovely June
days--it was full of her. Or if he looked at the College, he knew every
one of the steps, and the entrance, and the tall windows of the
lecture-rooms, where he had taught so contentedly, year after year, till
the terrible Motor had taken possession of him, the thing that was
driving him mad; and, strangely enough, what hurt him most and brought
drops of perspiration to his forehead was the National Bank in Main
Street; it made him remember his debt, and that he had no money at
all--nothing whatsoever but the few dollars in his pocket left after
paying the bills on the first of the month.

"It's of no use!" he cried, suddenly rising and turning away. "I cannot
stand it. I'm sorry, but it's too awful!"

Never before had he felt so thoroughly ashamed of himself. He was
breaking down before his son, to whom he knew he ought to be setting an
example of fortitude and common sense. He had forgotten the very names
of such qualities; the mere thought of Hope, whenever it crossed his
mind, mocked him maddeningly, and he hated the little City for the name
he had given it. Hope was his enemy since she had left him, and he was
hers; he could have found it in his heart to crush the poor little paper
town to pieces, and then to split up the very board itself for firewood.

The years that had been so full of belief were all at once empty, and
the memory of them rang hollow and false, because Hope had cheated him,
luring him on, only to forsake him at the great moment. Every hour he
had spent on the work had been misspent; he saw it all now, and the most
perfect of his faultless calculations only