Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,—immediately and without perspective,—but the latter always sees mankind through the frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married philosophers or reformers.
Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure of a married man and that of a single man.
At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head? The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had outlined to the girl.
Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
"Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do. Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life won't be wasted."
Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed, grumbling:
"Why is you still heah, black man?"
The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Why shouldn't I be here?"