I felt an emptiness when the train pulled out.  I did love my family, after all!  I would go back to the deserted house, and I could not bear to look in at the nursery door, at the little beds with covers flung over them.  Why couldn’t I appreciate these joys when I had them?

One evening, as we went home in an open street-car together, after such a departure, Tom blurted out:—­“Hugh, I believe I care for your family as much as for my own.  I often wonder if you realize how wonderful these children are!  My boys are just plain ruffians—­although I think they’re pretty decent ruffians, but Matthew has a mind—­he’s thoughtful—­and an imagination.  He’ll make a name for himself some day if he’s steered properly and allowed to develop naturally.  Moreton’s more like my boys.  And as for Chickabiddy!—­” words failed him.

I put my hand on his knee.  I actually loved him again as I had loved and yearned for him as a child,—­he was so human, so dependable.  And why couldn’t this feeling last?  He disapproved—­foolishly, I thought—­of my professional career, and this was only one of his limitations.  But I knew that he was loyal.  Why hadn’t I been able to breathe and be reasonably happy in that atmosphere of friendship and love in which I had been placed—­or rather in which I had placed myself?....  Before the summer was a day or two older I had grown accustomed to being alone, and enjoyed the liberty; and when Maude and the children returned in the autumn, similarly, it took me some days to get used to the restrictions imposed by a household.  I run the risk of shocking those who read this by declaring that if my family had been taken permanently out of my life, I should not long have missed them.  But on the whole, in those years my marriage relation might be called a negative one.  There were moments, as I have described, when I warmed to Maude, moments when I felt something akin to a violent antagonism aroused by little mannerisms and tricks she had.  The fact that we got along as well as we did was probably due to the orthodox teaching with which we had been inoculated,—­to the effect that matrimony was a moral trial, a shaking-down process.  But moral trials were ceasing to appeal to people, and more and more of them were refusing to be shaken down.  We didn’t cut the Gordian knot, but we managed to loosen it considerably.

I have spoken of a new species of titans who inhabited the giant buildings in Wall Street, New York, and fought among themselves for possession of the United States of America.  It is interesting to note that in these struggles a certain chivalry was observed among the combatants, no matter how bitter the rivalry:  for instance, it was deemed very bad form for one of the groups of combatants to take the public into their confidence; cities were upset and stirred to the core by these conflicts, and the citizens never knew who was doing the fighting, but imagined that some burning issue was at stake that concerned them.  As a matter of fact the issue always did concern them, but not in the way they supposed.