“Seven years ago.”

“Why in God’s name did you do it?” said Herkimer, flinging away his cigar angrily.  “You weren’t just any one—­Tom, Dick, or Harry.  You had something to say, man.  Listen.  I know what I’m talking about,—­I’ve seen the whole procession in the last ten years,—­you were one in a thousand.  You were a creator.  You had ideas; you were meant to be a leader, to head a movement.  You had more downright savage power, undeveloped, but tugging at the chain, than any man I’ve known.  Why did you do it?”

“I had almost forgotten,” said Rantoul, slowly.  “Are you sure?”

“Am I sure?” said Herkimer, furiously.  “I say what I mean; you know it.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Rantoul.  He stretched out his hand and drank his coffee, but without knowing what he did.  “Well, that’s all of the past—­what might have been.”

“But why?”

“Britt, old fellow,” said Rantoul at last, speaking as though to himself, “did you ever have a moment when you suddenly got out of yourself, looked at yourself and at your life as a spectator?—­saw the strange strings that had pulled you this way and that, and realized what might have been had you turned one corner at a certain day of your life instead of another?”

“No, I’ve gone where I wanted to go,” said Herkimer, obstinately.

“You think so.  Well, to-night I can see myself for the first time,” said Rantoul.  Then he added meditatively, “I have done not one single thing I wanted to.”

“But why—­why?”

“You have brought it all back to me,” said Rantoul, ignoring this question.  “It hurts.  I suppose to-morrow I shall resent it, but to-night I feel too deeply.  There is nothing free about us in this world, Britt.  I profoundly believe that.  Everything we do from morning to night is dictated by the direction of those about us.  An enemy, some one in the open, we can combat and resist; but it is those that are nearest to us who disarm us because they love us, that change us most, that thwart our desires, and make over our lives.  Nothing in this world is so inexorable, so terribly, terribly irresistible as a woman without strength, without logic, without vision, who only loves.”

“He is going to say things he will regret,” thought Herkimer, and yet he did not object.  Instead, he glanced down the dimly flushed path to the house where Mrs. Rantoul was sitting, her embroidery on her lap, her head raised as though listening.  Suddenly he said: 

“Look here, Clyde, do you want to tell me this?”

“Yes, I do; it’s life.  Why not?  We are at the age when we’ve got to face things.”

“Still—­”