“But—­I don’t understand.”

“I pretend to be very weak,” explained the elder man, with a guilty flush.  “I sit in the big chair yonder and my Jap boy waits on her.  She is very kind.”  Austin’s voice grew husky.  “I’m sorry to lose sight of the Park out yonder, and the trees and the children—­they’re growing indistinct.  I—­I like children.  I’ve always wanted some for myself.  I’ve dreamed about—­that.”  His thin, haggard face broke into a wistful smile.  “I guess that is all over with now.”

“Why?” questioned Suydam, savagely.  “Why don’t you ask her to marry you, Bob?  She couldn’t refuse—­and God knows you need her.”

“That’s just it; she couldn’t refuse.  This is the sort of thing a fellow must bear alone.  She’s too young, and beautiful, and fine to be harnessed up to a worn-out old—­cripple.”

“Cripple!” The other choked.  “Don’t talk like that.  Don’t be so blamed resigned.  It tears my heart out.  I—­I—­why, I believe I feel this more than you do.”

Austin turned his face to the speaker with a look of such tragic suffering that the younger man fell silent.

“I’m glad I can hide my feelings,” Austin told him, slowly, “for that is what I have to do every instant she is with me.  I don’t wish to inflict unnecessary pain upon my friends, but don’t you suppose I know what this means?  It means the destruction of all my fine hopes, the death of all I hold dear in the world.  I love my work, for I am—­or I was—­a success; this means I must give it up.  I’m strong in body and brain; this robs me of my usefulness.  All my life I have prayed that I might some time love a woman; that time has come, but this means I must give her up and be lonely all my days.  I must grope my way through the dark with never a ray of light to guide me.  Do you know how awful the darkness is?” He clasped his hands tightly.  “I must go hungering through the night, with a voiceless love to torture me.  Just at the crowning point of my life I’ve been snuffed out.  I must fall behind and see my friends desert me.”

“Bob!” cried the other, in shocked denial.

“Oh, you know it will come to that.  People don’t like to feel pity forever tugging at them.  I’ve been a lonely fellow and my friends are numbered.  For a time they will come to see me, and try to cheer me up; they will even try to include me in their pleasures; then when it is no longer a new story and their commiseration has worn itself out they will gradually fall away.  It always happens so.  I’ll be ’poor Bob Austin,’ and I’ll go feeling my way through life an object of pity, a stumbling, incomplete thing that has no place to fill, no object to work for, no one to care.  God!  I’m not the sort to go blind!  Where’s the justice of it?  I’ve lived clean.  Why did this happen to me?  Why?  Why?  I know what the world is; I’ve been a part of it.  I’ve seen the spring and the autumn colors and I’ve watched the sunsets.  I’ve looked into men’s faces and read their souls, and when you’ve done that you can’t live in darkness.  I can’t and—­I won’t!”