as to Margaret, she
seemed unchanged. She made no sign that anything unusual had occurred. We
only knew that Mr. Lyon went away less cheerful than he usually was, that
he said nothing of returning in response to our invitations, and that he
seemed to anticipate nothing but the fulfillment of a duty in his visit
to Washington.

What had happened was regarded as only an episode. In fact, however, I
doubt if there are any episodes in our lives, any asides, that do not
permanently affect our entire career. Are not the episodes, the casual
thoughts, the fortuitous, unplanned meetings, the brief and maybe at the
moment unnoted events, those which exercise the most influence on our
destiny? To all observation the career of Lyon, and not of Margaret, was
most affected by their interview. But often the implanting of an idea in
the mind is more potent than the frustration of a plan or the
gratification of a desire, so hidden are the causes that make character.

For some time I saw little of Margaret. Affairs in which I was not alone
or chiefly concerned took me from home. One of the most curious and
interesting places in the world is a Chamber in the business heart of New
York--if that scene of struggle and passion can be said to have a heart
--situated midway where the currents of eagerness to acquire the money of
other people, not to make it, ceaselessly meet and dash against each
other. If we could suppose there was a web covering this region, spun by
the most alert and busy of men to catch those less alert and more
productive, here in this Chamber would sit the ingenious spiders. But the
analogy fails, for spiders do not prey upon each other. Scientists say
that the human system has two nerve-centres--one in the brain, to which
and from which are telegraphed all movements depending upon the will, and
another in the small of the back, the centre of the involuntary
operations of respiration, digestion, and so on. It may be fanciful to
suppose that in the national system Washington is the one nervous centre
and New York the other. And yet it does sometimes seem that the nerves
and ganglions in the small of the back in the commercial metropolis act
automatically and without any visible intervention of intelligence. For
all that, their operations may be as essential as the other, in which the
will-power sometimes gets into a deadlock, and sometimes telegraphs the
most eccentric and incomprehensible orders. Puzzled by these
contr