"Adèle, do you remember, just before the order for mobilization came, how Robert wanted to travel a year in America to study American business and to see something of other conditions? Perhaps I was wrong not to consent. I've been sitting here thinking it over. Perhaps when he comes back [they always forced themselves to say "when" and never "if">[ perhaps we would better let him go, before he settles down to take my place." He took her hand and held it for a moment. "Do you know, Adèle, after all, the world changes, perhaps more than we realize, here in Versailles."
That evening Mr. Hale sat in his hotel bedroom with all the electric lights blazing, and filled sheet after sheet with elaborate calculations. He was concerned with an important detail of transatlantic transportation to which he did not believe half enough attention had been paid: the question as to what form of carrier is the best for certain breakable objects which he was arranging to send in large quantities into the States. The quantities were so large that if he could effect a small saving of space, with no increase of the breakage per cent., the sum-total would be considerable.
He figured out the relative cubic contents in boxes of a given dimension and in barrels, having always had a leaning towards barrels himself. He looked up technical tables as to the relative weight of sawdust, powdered cork, and excelsior, together with the statistics as to the relative amount of breakage with each sort of packing. His days were so filled with "seeing people" that he often thought the evenings were the only times he had to do "real work," the careful, minute, infinitely patient, and long-headed calculations which had made him the wealthy man he was.
The room was very hot and close, with all its windows and shutters closed and its curtains drawn to keep the light from showing in the street, a recent air-raid having tightened up the regulations about lights. The American's face was flushed, his eyes hot and smarting, his collar first wilted, and then laid aside. But he was accustomed to pay small heed to discomforts when there was work to be done, and continued obstinately struggling with the problems of cubic feet contained in a compartment of a ship's hold of given dimensions with given curves to the sides. The curve of the sides gave him a great deal of trouble, as he had quite forgotten the formulæ of abstract mathematics which would have solved the question, never having concerned himself with abstract mathematics since the day he had taken the final examination in that subject.
He sat up, wiping his forehead, rubbing his eyes. Behind the lids, for an instant shut, there swam before his eyes the garden in which he had sat that afternoon, green and hidden and golden. The perfume from the roses floated again about him.
He opened his eyes on the gaudy, banal hotel bedroom, cruelly lighted with the hard gaze of the unveiled electric bulbs. He felt very tired.
"I've half a notion to call that enough for to-night," he said to himself, standing up from the table.
He snapped off the electric lights and opened the shutters. A clear, cool breath of outdoor air came in silently, filling the room and his lungs. The moonlight lay in a wide pool at his feet and on the balcony before his window. He hesitated a moment, glanced out at the sky, and pulled an armchair out on the balcony.
There was a long silence while he puffed at a cigar and while the moon dropped lower. At first he went on thinking of cubic feet and relative weights, but presently his cigar began to glow less redly. After a time it went out unheeded. The hand which held it dropped on the arm of the chair, loosely.
The man stirred, relaxed all his muscles, and stretched himself out in the chair, tipping his head back to see the stars.