He would have upbraided himself more bitterly for his cowardice had he not found an excuse in the thought that, after all, there would be time in the morning.  It was best that she should have the refreshment of the night.  The one thing important was that she should not have the shock of learning from others on the morrow that he was not coming back—­that he was going to Singville.  Should he go there at all, he was determined to stay.  Since he had no fight to put up, it was better that his going should be once for all.  The thought of weeks, of months, perhaps, of quasi-freedom, during which he should be parading himself “on bail,” was far more terrible to him than that of prison.  He must prepare her for the beginning of his doom at all costs to himself; but, he reasoned, she would be more capable of taking the information calmly in the daylight of the morning than now, at a few minutes of midnight.

It was another short reprieve, enabling him to give all his attention to the tasks before him.  If he was not to come back to Tory Hill he must leave his private papers there, his more intimate treasures, in good order.  Certain things would have to be put away, others rearranged, others destroyed.  For the most part they were in the library, the room he specially claimed as his own.  Before setting himself to the work there he walked through some of the other rooms, turning out the lights.

In doing so he was consciously taking a farewell.  He had been born in this house; in it he had spent his boyhood; to it he had come back as a young married man.  He had lived in it till his wife and he had set up their more ambitious establishment in Boston, an extravagance from which, perhaps, all the subsequent misfortunes could be dated.  He had known at the time that his father, had he lived, would have condemned the step; but he himself was a believer in fortunate chances.  Besides, it was preposterous for a young couple of fashion to continue living in a rambling old house that belonged to neither town nor country, at a time when the whole trend of life was cityward.  They had discussed the move, with its large increase of expenditure, from every point of view, and found it one from which, in their social position, there was no escape.  It was a matter about which they had hardly any choice.

So, too, a few years later, with the taking of the cottage at Newport.  It was forced on them.  When all their friends were doing something of the sort it seemed absurd to hesitate because of a mere matter of means—­especially when by hook or by crook the means could be procured.  Similar reasoning had attended their various residences abroad—­in London, Paris, Rome.  Country-houses in England or villas on the Riviera became matters of necessity, according to the demands of Olivia’s entry into the world of fashion or Mrs. Guion’s health.