In his day or two in the great city he drove or walked in the parks, through the boulevards, and along the lake front. He grasped, as well as he could in so short a time, the city's vastness, measured not alone by extent of territory, by height of buildings, but by resources, the amount of which he gathered from the fragments of talk that came to him in his hurried interviews with various business men. Boston, looked at with their eyes, through the large end of the telescope, was almost lost in a dwindling perspective. The West End,—how trivial all its interests! Miss Theodora, Kate, Miss Chatterwits, Diantha,—well, these loomed up a little larger than the city itself; and Eugenie—ah! she filled the field of the telescope, until Ernest could see little else.
After he had crossed the fertile fields of Illinois, and had watched the green farms of Nebraska fade away into the dull brown, uncultivated plains, he grew lonely, realizing how far he was from all that was dearest to him. Would not Miss Theodora's heart have ached with a pain deeper than that caused by this separation, could she have known that all her years of devotion were obscured by the glamor of that one bright year in which Ernest had felt sure of Eugenie's love.
As he looked from the car window across the wide stretch of open country, where the only objects between his eye and the distant horizon were a canvas-covered wagon or a solitary horseman, Ernest had more than enough time for reflection. Would Eugenie be true to him? Of course; surely that was not a doubt tugging at his heart-strings. Would her father be more reasonable? His brow darkened a little as he thought of his last interview with Mr. Kurtz.
"No," the latter had said decidedly; "it is not worth while to talk of an engagement. Time enough for that when you have shown what you can do. As I understand it, you have no special prospects at present. At least, it's to be proved whether you'll succeed in the West. I've known a good many people to fail out there. I can't have Eugenie bound by an indefinite engagement. I've worked hard for her, and she's used to everything. What could you give her? If Eugenie married tomorrow, she'd want just as much as she has to-day. She isn't the kind of a girl to live on nothing but love. I've talked with her, and know how she feels."
This last sentence had made Ernest shiver, and now, as it recurred to him, he again wondered if, after all, Eugenie was less in earnest than he.
He recalled the dignity with which Mr. Kurtz had drawn himself up as he said:
"Besides, I'm not going to have Eugenie go into a family likely to look down on her." Then, paying no attention to Ernest's protests, "Oh, yes, I know what I'm talking about. I haven't done business in Boston for nothing these forty years without knowing what they call the difference between people. It isn't much more than skin deep, but they feel it, all your people. I'm a self-made man, and I'm not ashamed of it. I don't ask any favors of any one, and I don't want any—and I'm not anxious to have my daughter go among people who will look down on her."
"But my people are so few," poor Ernest had said. "My aunt—"
"Oh, your aunt—yes—people respect her, and she's very good to the poor; but she was born in Boston, and she don't believe in marrying out of her set any more than if she was a Hindoo—unless she's made different from most Boston men and women. I know that I'm made of the same flesh and blood as the rest of them. But then I wasn't born in Boston, and perhaps my eyesight is clearer on that account. At any rate, I'm going to do my duty by Eugenie."