easily
dispelled.

He himself ended the silence that I could not bring myself to break. "I
have heard of a divided duty, but I can have no doubts, no dilemmas, as
to mine. I believe that I am not fanciful--that I see realities just as
they are. If ever man found work lying close to his hands, I have found
it. If ever an entire and undivided responsibility rested upon human
creature, it is mine. Every instinct of my heart, every decision of my
intellect, alike shows me that my duty lies in the path which I am
treading. Nobody on earth, nobody but God, knows just exactly what I
have felt the few past months. I couldn't write to you and Harry. Life
had always been a pleasant thing to me. My father was not a lovable man,
nor was he in his home all that a son longs for in a father. Still, he
was rich and respected; he represented a beneficent financial power; he
controlled many interests, developed resources, carried out schemes
which were useful alike to poor and rich. I used to be proud to hear it
said, 'That is young Holt, son of Adam Holt of the ---- Mills.' Now I am
obliged to bear with meekness, when he is called dishonest, when he is
classed with those who have suffered the punishment of convicted felons,
when his pitiful infirmity of body and mind is sneered at. We are living
in our house as transient guests: as soon as it can be sold we shall
seek some humbler shelter. The pleasant household ways are all gone:
everything that used to gladden our eyes has been carried away. My
mother's eyes rest nowhere save on my father's face or mine: she cannot
look at the bare places in the house, for she thinks too much then of
her great calamity. All these are troubles which cut me deep: you don't
know, Floyd, how disgrace burns into the soul--worse than bereavement,
worse than death. I have been bereaved of all, and I seem to have tasted
the bitterness of a thousand deaths. Still"--he turned abruptly and
looked me in the eyes with a stiff white face--"there are times when I
feel but one loss. There is strength in me, and, please God, by and by I
shall shape things to their right ends again; but this other loss! I
don't need to tell you," he went on huskily, "how above and beyond all
other objects on earth Georgy Lenox has been to me. At times,
retrievement, success, unsullied honor, all seem to me as nothing, since
she is not to be at the end of them."

We had reached the factories now, and he resumed his usual calmness, and