To M. A....

He was thinking of the town he had known. Not of old New York⁠—he had heard of that from old, old men when he himself had still been young and had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a young...

Roger’s hearing was extremely acute. Though the room where he was sitting, his study, was at the back of the house, he heard Deborah’s key at the street door and he heard the door softly open and clos...

On the next evening, Saturday, while Roger ate his dinner, Laura came to sit with him. She herself was dining out. That she should have dressed so early in order to keep him company had caused her fat...

He breakfasted with Deborah late on Sunday morning. He had come down at the usual hour despite his long tramp of the previous night, for he wanted to tell her the news and talk it all out before Laura...

One afternoon a few days later Roger was riding in the park. He rode “William,” a large lazy cob who as he advanced in age had so subtly and insidiously slackened his pace from a trot to a jog that Ro...

Roger soon grew accustomed to seeing young Sloane about the house. They could talk together more easily, and he began to call him Harold. Harold asked him with Laura to lunch at the Ritz to meet the a...

In the weeks which followed, Roger found the peace of his home so interrupted and disturbed by wedding preparations that often retreating into his den he earnestly told himself he was through, that a ...

It was a relief to him to find how smoothly he and Deborah dropped back into their old relations. It was good to get home those evenings; for in this new stage of its existence, with its family of two...

Deborah needed rest, he thought, for the bright attractive face of his daughter was looking rather pale of late, and the birthmark on her forehead showed a faint thin line of red. One night at dinner,...

Out of the subway they emerged into a noisy tenement street. Roger had known such streets as this, but only in the nighttime, as picturesque and adventurous ways in an underground world he had explore...

She told him the next morning her night school closed for the summer that week. “I think I should like to see it,” her father said determinedly. She gave him an affectionate smile: “Oh, dearie. Haven’...

Roger awoke the next morning feeling sore and weary, and later in his office it was hard to keep his mind on his work. He thought of young Isadore Freedom. He was glad he had met that boy, and so he f...

Deborah’s recovery was rapid and determined. The next night she was sitting up and making light of her illness. On the third day she dismissed her nurse, and when her father came home from his office ...

A few hours later Roger awakened. His lower berth was still pitch dark. The train had stopped, and he had been roused by a voice outside his window. Rough and slow and nasal, the leisurely drawl of a ...

On his return to the city, Roger found that Deborah’s school had apparently swept all other interests out of her mind. Baird hardly ever came to the house, and she herself was seldom there except for ...

But that winter there was more in the house than Deborah’s big family. Though at times Roger felt it surging in with its crude, immense vitality, there were other times when it was not so, and the liv...

But she did not appear to care to be helped. Nor did Allan⁠—he rarely came to the house, and he went to Edith’s not at all. He was even absent from her Christmas tree for the children, a jolly little ...

In Deborah’s school, in the meantime, affairs had drawn to a climax. The moment had come for the city to say whether her new experiment should be dropped the following year or allowed to go on and dev...

Edith was radiant at the news. “I do hope they’re not going to grudge themselves a good long wedding trip!” she exclaimed. “They’re going abroad,” said Roger. “Oh, splendid! And the wedding! Church or...

Roger had been spending a long quiet evening at home. He had asked John to dine with him and they had chatted for a time. Then John had started up to his room. And listening to the slow shuffling step...

Roger went through the next two days in a kind of a stupor. He remembered holding Edith and feeling her shudder as though from a chill. He remembered being stopped in the hall by George who had dresse...

But there was a rugged practical side to the character of Roger Gale, and the next morning he was ashamed of the brooding thoughts which had come in the night. He shook them off as morbid, and resolut...

George met him at the station, as he had done a year before. But at once Roger noticed a difference. In the short time since his father’s death certain lines had come in the boy’s freckled face, and t...

It had rained so hard for the past two days that no one had gone to the village, which was nearly three miles from the farm. But when the storm was over at last, George and Elizabeth tramped down and ...

Roger saw little of Deborah in the weeks that followed. She was gathering her forces for the long struggle she saw ahead. And his own worries filled his mind. On his house he succeeded in borrowing fi...

It was only a few days later that Edith arrived with her children. Roger met her at the train at eight o’clock in the evening. The fast mountain express of the summer had been taken off some time befo...

Roger found her like that one evening. He heard what he thought was a sob from the room, for she had forgotten to close the door. He came into the doorway but drew back, and closed the door with barel...

After dinner that night, in the living room the two older children studied their lessons and Edith sat mending a pair of rompers for little Tad. Presently Roger came out from his den with the evening ...

But later in the evening, when Allan and Deborah came in, Roger, who in the meantime had had a good hour in Japan and was somewhat relaxed and soothed, decided at once this was the time to tell her an...

And now he felt the approach at last of another season of quiet, one of those uneventful times which come in family histories. As he washed and dressed for dinner, one night a little later, he thought...

If there were any cloud upon his horizon, it was the thought of Laura. She had barely been to the house since Edith had come back to town; and at times, especially in the days when things had looked d...

On the floor below she met her father, who was coming out of his room. He looked at her keenly: “What’s the trouble?” “Laura’s here,” she answered. “Trouble again with her husband. Better leave her al...

But as he watched Laura in the house, Roger’s first emotions were complicated more and more by a feeling of bewilderment. At dinner the next evening he noticed with astonishment that she appeared like...

But the quiet was dark to Roger now. Each night he spent in his study alone, for instinctively he felt the need of being by himself for a while, of keeping away from his children⁠—out of whose lives h...

There came a season of sleet and rain when the smaller children were shut indoors and it was hard to keep them amused. They did not look well, and Edith was worried. She had always dreaded the spring,...

On the morrow Bruce did not grow better. If anything, the child grew worse. But by the next morning the crisis had passed. In the house the tension relaxed, and Roger suddenly felt so weak that he wen...

On the next day, which was Sunday, Deborah made an appointment with her father’s physician, and had a long talk with him at his house. Upon her return she went to her room and stayed there until eveni...

It was a clear beautiful afternoon toward the end of May. And as the train puffing up the grade wound along the Connecticut River, Roger sat looking out of the window. The orchards were pink and white...

The next morning on his arrival in town, Roger went to his office. He had little cause for uneasiness there, for twice in the summer he had come down to keep an eye on the business, while John had tak...

There came an interruption. One night when Deborah was out and Roger sat in his study alone, the maid came in highly flustered and said, “Mr. Gale! It’s Miss Laura to see you!” He turned with a startl...

Deborah had not yet stopped work. Again and again she put it off. For in her busy office so many demands both old and new kept pressing in upon her, such unexpected questions and vexing little problem...

Of that greater family, one member had been in the house all through the month which had just gone by. But he had been so quiet, so carefully unobtrusive, that he had been scarcely noticed. Very early...

After John had gone away the house was very quiet. Only from the room upstairs there could be heard occasionally the faint clear cry of Deborah’s child. And once again to Roger came a season of repose...

And his dreams were of children. Their faces passed before him. Now they were young again in the house. They were eating their suppers, three small girls, chattering like magpies. From her end of the ...