He had lately hungered for somebody more charitable to himself than he himself could be.  He had experienced a mean, spiritless happiness in noting the honors which the widow was heaping on his memory.  Now he is furiously in love with that widow.  He sallies from the hotel in haste to her residence.

Three blocks away from his goal, with the old home in sight, he awakens to his danger.  A moment more and the whole shameful truth had been known!

“No, base as I am, I cannot do that,” he shudders.

Besides, he is a true lover, and what one ever dared to take the great risk?

Here she lives!  And between her and her lover, her husband, yawns the chasm of death!  Was it not a black act that could so enrobe a woman?  He recalls her garb as she appeared at the dedication yesterday—­solemn, solemn!

It is unsafe to stay in this neighborhood, yet let this man creep nearer and gaze on the house where Davy died.

The balcony—­it seems to him, dimly, that he made a speech from that balcony.  But Davy’s death is not now the calamity it was yesterday.  It seems more like a pleasant memory—­a small memory.  The gigantic thought is Esther, Esther—­Esther the beautiful, the noble, the generous, the faithful.  She shall be the wife of Ulysses, waiting for his return, and he shall return!

The husband again starts for Esther’s door.  There are two men within him—­one is David Lockwin dead, the other is David Lockwin living.  Once more the eminent man who is dead seizes the maddened lover who is living and prevents a disaster.

Love this house as he may, therefore, David Lockwin must avoid it until he can control himself.  It is true his books are in there, his manuscripts, his chronicles, “Josephus,” and a thousand things without which he cannot lay hold on the true dignity of life.  It is true he is slipping down the declivity that invites the easy descent of the obscure and powerless citizen.  If he have true hope—­and what lover has it not—­he must hurry away.  He is not safe in Chicago just at present, because the abstraction of a lover, joined with the self-forgetfulness of a man in the second life, will assuredly lead him to ruin.

His eyes leave that house with utter regret.  He makes the long ride to Davy’s tomb and finds it covered with fresh flowers.  The tenderest of care is visible.  The lawn is perfect—­not a leaf of plantain, not a spear of dandelion.  Money will not produce such stewardship of the sepulcher.  It is Esther’s own devotion.

He goes to the site of the cenotaph.  Is it not a difficulty for a lover?  Yet love sustains him.  His invention suggests method after method by which he may undo the past.

He visits the foundations of the David Lockwin Annex.  He notes the character of the materials that are strewn over three streets.  His love for Esther only increases.

Thence to the Art Institute he hastens.  They said it was a poor likeness of Lockwin.  He vows it is good.  It is good because Esther has done it!