The moment Laura joined them, her father’s eye was caught and held by the ring upon her finger.  Roger knew rings, they were his hobby, and this huge yellow solitaire in its new and brilliant setting at once awakened his dislike.  It just fitted the life they were to lead!  What life?  As he listened to his daughter he kept wondering if she were so sure.  Had she felt no uneasiness?  She must have, he decided, for all her gay excitement.  One Laura in that smiling face; another Laura deep inside, doubting and uncertain, reaching for her happiness, now elated, now dismayed, exclaiming, “Now at last I’m starting!” Oh, what an ignorant child she was.  He wanted to cry out to her, “You’ll always be just starting!  You’ll never be sure, you’ll never be happy, you’ll always be just beginning to be!  And the happier you are, the more you will feel it is only a start!...  And then-”

More and more his spirit withdrew from these two heedless children.  Later on, when Deborah came, he barely noticed her meeting with Sloane.  And through dinner, while they talked of plans for the wedding, the trip abroad, still Roger took no part at all.  He felt dull and heavy.  Deborah too, he noticed, after her first efforts to be welcoming and friendly, had gradually grown silent.  He saw her watching Laura with a mingled look of affection and of whimsical dismay.  Soon after dinner she left them, and Roger smoked with the boy for a while and learned that he was twenty-nine.  Both had grown uneasy and rather dull with each other.  It was a relief when again Laura joined them, dressed to go out.  She and her lover left the house.

Roger sat motionless for some time.  His cigar grew cold unheeded.  One of the sorrows of his life had been that his only son had died.  Bruce had been almost like a son.  But this young man of Laura’s?  No.

Later he went for his evening walk.  And as though drawn by invisible chains he strayed far down into the ghetto.  Soon he was elbowing his way through a maze of uproarious tenement streets as one who had been there many times.  But he noticed little around him.  He went on, as he had always gone, seeing and hearing this seething life only as a background to his own adventure.  He reached his destination.  Pushing his way through a swarm of urchins playing in front of a pawnshop, he entered and was a long time inside, and when he came out again at last the whole expression of his face had undergone a striking change.  As one who had found the solace he needed for the moment, his pace unconsciously quickened and he looked about him with brighter eyes.