His excitement faded before the exigencies of the unavoidable situation; he became cold, logical, legal.  Jasper Penny listened, standing, to his instructions, the exact forecasting of every move probable at the hearing in the Mayor’s chamber.  “After that,” Stephen added, “we can face the problem of Susan’s future.  She thinks tremendously of her school.  It will fall to pieces in her hands.  There can be no question of material assistance; refused her own brother.

“Now, understand—­stay in these rooms until I send for you.  See no one.  I’ll get on, go to Susan.  The thing itself should be short; her character will assist you there.  What a mess you have made of living, Jasper.”

XX

In the silence of the sitting room Jasper Penny heard diverse and yet mingled inner voices:  Essie’s younger, exuberant periods, her joy at presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any doubt, she had herself killed.  Running through this were the strains of a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low, diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans’ ball.  The voice continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin complaint of a child, of Eunice, taken against her will from the Academy.  These three, Essie and Susan and Eunice, combined, now one rising above the other, yet inexplicably, always, the same.  Back of them were other, less poignant, echoes, flashes of place, impressions of associated heat or cold, darkness or light: 

He saw the features of Howat Penny, in the canvas by Gustavus Hesselius, regarding him out of a lost youth; he recalled, and again experienced, the sense of Howat’s nearness; integral with himself; merging into his own youth, no less surely lost, yet enduring.  His mother joined the immaterial company, accents, rigid with pride in him.  And penetrating, binding, all was the dull beat of the trip hammer at Myrtle Forge.  He had mechanically finished dressing, and stood absently twisting the drapery at a window.  A fine tracery of lines had suddenly appeared about his eyes; the cold rays of the winter sun, streaming over his erect figure, accentuated the patches of grey plentiful in his hair.

He saw, on the street below, a parade of firemen, in scarlet tunics and brass helmets, dragging a glittering engine.  The men walked evenly abreast, at cross ropes.  A leader blew a brilliant fanfare on an embossed, silver horn.  Women passed, foreshortened into circular bells of colour, draped with gay pelerines and rich India shawls.  He saw all and nothing.  The horn of the firemen sounded without meaning on his distracted hearing.  The flood of his suffering rose darkly, oppressing his heart, choking his breath.  Perhaps if, as he had desired, he had gone away, Susan would be spared.  But Stephen was right; nothing