saic
advertisement. And Roland was still more excited. The air of the
house, its peace, refinement, and luxury appealed irresistibly to him.
It was his native air. He wondered how he had endured the vulgarity
and penury of his surroundings for so long; how indeed he had borne
with Denasia's shortcomings at all. That refined old gentleman, that
quiet, elegant woman whom he had had a glimpse of--these people were
like himself, of his own order--he would never weary of them. The
class he had voluntarily chosen, the people with whom poverty had
compelled him to consort, they affected him now as the memory of a
debauch affects a man when it is over.

"I had no business out of my proper sphere," he said sadly. "Elizabeth
was right--right even about Denasia."

He sat down in Union Square to consider his position, and he came to a
very rapid and positive conclusion. He declared to himself: "I will no
longer waste my life. Denasia and I have made a great mistake.
Together, we shall be poor and miserable. Apart, we shall be happy. I
no longer love her. I do not believe she loves me. All the love she
can spare from her blustering father and mother she wastes on that
miserable sickly babe, who would be a thousand times better dead than
alive. If I leave her she will go back to St. Penfer. I have a hundred
dollars; I will give her fifty of them. She can pay a steerage passage
out of it or go in a sailing-vessel, or if she does not like that way
she has things she can sell. If I give her half of what I have I do
very well indeed."

He went rapidly to his home, or room. He knew that Denasia had an
engagement to keep, and he hoped that he might be fortunate enough to
find her out. It was as he wished: Denasia had gone out and the
landlady was sitting beside the baby's cradle. Roland dismissed her
with that manner all women declared to be charming, and then he sat
down and wrote a letter to his wife. It did not occupy him ten
minutes. Some of his clothing was yet very good and fashionable; he
packed it in the leather trap which had gone with him to college, and
then he sent a little girl for a cab. Without word and without
observation he drove away from the scene of so much vexation and
disappointment.

The whole life and vicinity had suddenly become horrible to
him--Denasia, his child, the shabby landlady, the shabby house, the
dirty little grocery at the corner where he had bought his cigars and
their small household supplies, t