eel about doing your duty, John; but now that things are so
comfortably settled, isn't it a pity to unsettle them?"

* * * * *

Amherst had intended, on leaving his mother, to rejoin Bessy, whom he
could still discern, on the lawn, in absorbed communion with Miss Brent;
but after what had passed it seemed impossible, for the moment, to
recover the garden-party tone, and he made his escape through the house
while a trio of Cuban singers, who formed the crowning number of the
entertainment, gathered the company in a denser circle about their
guitars.

As he walked on aimlessly under the deep June shadows of Maplewood
Avenue his mother's last words formed an ironical accompaniment to his
thoughts. "Now that things are comfortably settled--" he knew so well
what that elastic epithet covered! Himself, for instance, ensconced in
the impenetrable prosperity of his wonderful marriage; herself too
(unconsciously, dear soul!), so happily tucked away in a cranny of that
new and spacious life, and no more able to conceive why existing
conditions should be disturbed than the bird in the eaves understands
why the house should be torn down. Well--he had learned at last what his
experience with his poor, valiant, puzzled mother might have taught him:
that one must never ask from women any view but the personal one, any
measure of conduct but that of their own pains and pleasures. She,
indeed, had borne undauntedly enough the brunt of their earlier trials;
but that was merely because, as she said, the mother's instinct bade her
heap all her private hopes on the great devouring altar of her son's
ambition; it was not because she had ever, in the very least, understood
or sympathized with his aims.

And Bessy--? Perhaps if their little son had lived she might in turn
have obeyed the world-old instinct of self-effacement--but now! He
remembered with an intenser self-derision that, not even in the first
surprise of his passion, had he deluded himself with the idea that Bessy
Westmore was an exception to her sex. He had argued rather that, being
only a lovelier product of the common mould, she would abound in the
adaptabilities and pliancies which the lords of the earth have seen fit
to cultivate in their companions. She would care for his aims because
they were his. During their precipitate wooing, and through the first
brief months of marriage, this profound and original theory had been
gratifyingly confi