“I have not even a mother-country,” he thought.  “I am a parent, not a child.  My patriotism has been that of a tigress for her young, not of a man for his fatherland.  God knows I am willing, and always have been, to die for this country, which is so much my own, but why—­why—­need I have been made so human?  Could I not have understood men as well?  Could I not have performed my various part without loving my wife and children, my friends, with the deepest tenderness and passion of which the human heart is capable?  Then I would go without a pang, for I am tired, and death would be a relief.  But, since all humanity was forced into me, why should not I, now that I have faithfully done my part, be permitted a few years of happiness by my hearthstone?”

He raised his hands as if to shut out the cold high stars.  He had had few bitter moments since the night, four years before, when he had deliberately exorcised bitterness and hate; and that mellowness had come to him which came to his great rivals in their old age.  But to-night he let the deeps rise.  He ached with human wants, and he was bidden to work out his last act of service to the country for whose sole use he had been sent to Earth.

He dropped his hands and stared at the worlds above.  “Must I go on?” he thought.  “Is that it?  Does other work await me elsewhere?  Has the Almighty detached from himself a few creative egos, who go from world to world and do their part; removed the day their usefulness is over, that they shall not dissipate their energy, nor live until men regard with slighting wonder the work of the useless old creature in their midst, withdraw from it their first reverence?  I go in the fulness of my maturity and the high tide of respect and affection; I go in the dramatic manner of my advent, and my work will be a sacred thing;—­even my enemies will not dare to pull it down until such time as they are calm enough to see it as it is; and then the desire will have passed.  Doubtless all things are best and right....  Maturity?  I feel as old as time and as young as laughter.”

He sat up suddenly and bent his head.  Millions of tiny bells were ringing through the forest.  So low, so golden, so remote they sounded, that they might have hung in the stars above or in the deeps of the earth.  He listened so intently for a moment that life seemed suspended, and he saw neither the cool dark forest nor the silver ripple of the Hudson, but a torn and desolate land, and a gravestone at his feet.  Then he passed his hand over his forehead with a long breath, and went softly into the drawing-room.

Angelica sat at the piano, with her head thrown back, her long fair hair hanging to the floor.  Her dark eyes were blank, but her fingers shook from the keys the music of a Tropic night.  It was a music that Hamilton had not sent a thought after since the day he landed in America, thirty-one years ago.  It had come to her, with other memories, by direct inheritance.