"What will you do? I mean after your visit to us, for, of course, you must rest."
Sommers smiled ironically.
"That is the question every one asks. 'What will you do? what will you do?' Suppose I should say 'Nothing'? We are always planning. No one is ready to wait and turn his hand to the nearest job. To-morrow, next month, in good time, I shall know what that is."
"It puts out of the question a career, personal ambition."
"Yes," he answered quickly. "And could you do that? Could you care for a man who will have no career, who has no 'future'?"
Sommers's voice had taken a new tone of earnestness, unlike the sober speculation in which they had been indulging. Miss Hitchcock turned her face to the faded landscape of the suburban fields, and failed to reply.
"I have lived out my egotism," he continued earnestly. "What you would call ambition has been dead for long months. I haven't any lofty ambition even for scientific work. Good results, even there, it seems to me, are not born of personal desire, of pride. I am content to be a failure—an honest failure," he ended sharply.
"Don't say that!" she protested, looking at him frankly. "I shall never agree to that."
The people around them began to bestir themselves with the nervous restlessness of pent-up energy. Parker Hitchcock came into the car from the smoking-room.
"We can get off at Twenty-second Street," he called out eagerly. "You're coming, doctor?"