For a moment the wild thought came to him that he might try to explain, to justify himself, to prove to his father that in this matter he had but done as others do, and that the punishment was intolerably heavier than the crime; but then, looking up and meeting Thomas Carden's perplexed, questioning eyes, he felt a great rush of shame and horror, not only of himself, but of all those who look at life as he himself had always looked at it; for the first time, he understood the mysterious necessity, as well as the beauty, of abnegation, of renunciation.
"Father," he said, "listen. I will not go away alone; I was mad to think of such a thing. We will go together, you and I,—Lane has told me that such has been your wish,—and then perhaps some day we will come back together."
After this, for the first time for many nights, Theodore Carden fell into a dreamless sleep.
III
A VERY MODERN INSTANCE
Oliver Germaine walked with long, even strides from the Marble Arch to Grosvenor Gate. It was Sunday morning, early in July, and the comparatively deserted portion of the Park which he had chosen was, even so, full of walkers. A good many people, men as well as women, looked at him pleasantly as he went by, for the young man was an attractive, even an arresting personality to the type of person who takes part in Church Parade.
Germaine was tall, slim, dark, so blessed by fate in the mere matter of eyes, nose and mouth, that his looks were often commented on when his wife's beauty was mentioned.
So it was that, as he walked quickly by, a rather vexed expression on his handsome face, almost every man who saw him envied him—if not his looks then his clothes, if not his clothes then his air of being young, healthy, and, to use an ugly modern phrase, in perfect condition.