During the long, slow journey in the carriage to the cemetery my mother did not raise her veil.  It was not until she reached out and seized my hand, convulsively, that I realized she was still a part of my existence.

In the days that followed I became aware that my father’s death had removed a restrictive element, that I was free now to take without criticism or opposition whatever course in life I might desire.  It may be that I had apprehended even then that his professional ideals would not have coincided with my own.  Mingled with this sense of emancipation was a curious feeling of regret, of mourning for something I had never valued, something fixed and dependable for which he had stood, a rock and a refuge of which I had never availed myself!...  When his will was opened it was found that the property had been left to my mother during her lifetime.  It was larger than I had thought, four hundred thousand dollars, shrewdly invested, for the most part, in city real estate.  My father had been very secretive as to money matters, and my mother had no interest in them.

Three or four days later I received in the mail a typewritten letter signed by Theodore Watling, expressing sympathy for my bereavement, and asking me to drop in on him, down town, before I should leave the city.  In contrast to the somewhat dingy offices where my father had practised in the Blackwood Block, the quarters of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon on the eighth floor of the new Durrett Building were modern to a degree, finished in oak and floored with marble, with a railed-off space where young women with nimble fingers played ceaselessly on typewriters.  One of them informed me that Mr. Watling was busy, but on reading my card added that she would take it in.  Meanwhile, in company with two others who may have been clients, I waited.  This, then, was what it meant to be a lawyer of importance, to have, like a Chesterfield, an ante-room where clients cooled their heels and awaited one’s pleasure...

The young woman returned, and led me through a corridor to a door on which was painted Mr. Wailing.

I recall him tilted back in his chair in a debonnair manner beside his polished desk, the hint of a smile on his lips; and leaning close to him was a yellow, owl-like person whose eyes, as they turned to me, gave the impression of having stared for years into hard, artificial lights.  Mr. Watling rose briskly.

“How are you, Hugh?” he said, the warmth of his greeting tempered by just the note of condolence suitable to my black clothes.  “I’m glad you came.  I wanted to see you before you went back to Cambridge.  I must introduce you to Judge Bering, of our State Supreme Court.  Judge, this is Mr. Paret’s boy.”

The judge looked me over with a certain slow impressiveness, and gave me a soft and fleshy hand.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Paret.  Your father was a great loss to our bar,” he declared.

I detected in his tone and manner a slight reservation that could not be called precisely judicial dignity; it was as though, in these few words, he had gone to the limit of self-commitment with a stranger—­a striking contrast to the confidential attitude towards Mr. Watling in which I had surprised him.