This man who built the house was filled with ambition. He imagined as he walked through the halls and its decorated rooms, with his wife, that they would live long and he would have the opportunity of showing those whom he knew what the proper condition of life should be. These two sat in the marvelous rooms and wandered in its gardens and made their futile plans.
Success had twisted their perspective; and the woman’s perspective was even more badly twisted than the man’s.
Fate stood back of them in the shadows and laughed at them and their vain imaginings.
The servants whom they hired to do their bidding, grinned at their stupidity. They worked with secret grudgings in their hearts and stole from them with perfect equanimity. The man knew these things, but felt it was part of the price he had to pay.
In the world he was bowed down to and people he knew pointed their fingers at him and envied him his wealth and his big house. But fate came and crushed him. When he was gone fate went out of the doors to look for others to come into the house, and the place he had made for himself, and swept into its walls and gardens Clarinda and Peter.
Peter and Clarinda went in the front doors of the house of sorrow. The servants bowed and grinned. The clocks struck the hours with indifference, but Peter gloated. The automobile he had bought stood on the paved way. As they entered he handed Clarinda a deed for the place, and Clarinda smiled and kissed him. All the anger she had felt went from her heart. The newness of the place, its size compared with the flat, gave her pride just as it had Peter.
Peter took her through the rooms, and they passed from the hall into the parlors, then up the stairs into Clarinda’s apartments. In the middle of the room stood Clarinda’s little maid who gave assurance that all had not been swept away, that there was something to hold to. Peter’s joy was great. He babbled on without hindrance, and with pleasure took her into a tiny room just off the one they were in. There he had placed a divan, with a tall lamp behind it. In front of which was a fireplace, and on the irons lay wood ready to be lit.
Clarinda was pleased and she turned to Peter.
“It is very nice. Only, Peter, I am afraid it is too large. I don’t think I am going to like it as much as I did the flat.”
“Then you are not pleased that I bought it? Or is it because I joked with you?”