His wife, to whom he had been so faithful in
one sense since she had passed into the asylum, had died, and with her
going, a new field of life seemed to open up to him. She had died
almost on the same day as John Grier. She had been buried secludedly,
piteously, and he had gone back to his office with the thought that life
had become a preposterous freedom.
So it was that, on the day when he spoke at the political meeting, his
life's tragedy became a hammer beating every nerve into emotion. He was
like one shipwrecked who strikes out with a swimmer's will to reach his
goal. All at once, on the platform, as he spoke, when his eyes saw the
faces of Carnac and his mother the catastrophe stunned him like a huge
engine of war. There had come to him at last a sense of duty where Alma
Grier was concerned. She was nearly fifty years of age, and he was
fifty-nine; she was a widow with this world's goods; she had been to him
how near and dear! for a brief hour, and then--no more. He knew the boy
was his son, because he saw his own face, as it had been in his youth,
though his mother's look was also there-transforming, illumining.
He had a pang as he saw the two at the close of his meeting filtering out
into the great retort of the world. Then it was that he had the impulse
to go to the woman's home, express his sorrow, and in some small sense
wipe out his wrong by offering her marriage.
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