It was on my tongue to refute this, to say that everybody had a chance.  I could indeed recall many arguments that had been drilled into me; quotations, even, from court decisions.  But something prevented me from doing this,—­something in his manner, which was neither argumentative nor combative.

“That’s why I am going into the law,” he added.  “And I intend to stay in it if I can keep alive.  It’s a great chance for me—­for all of us.  Aren’t you at the Law School?”

I nodded.  Once more, as his earnest glance fell upon me, came that suggestion of a subtle, inexplicable link between us; but before I could reply, steps were heard behind us, and an elderly servant, bareheaded, was seen coming down the path.

“Are you the reporter?” he demanded somewhat impatiently of Krebs.  “If you want to see Mr. Dome, you’d better come right away.  He’s going out for a drive.”

For a while, after he had shaken my hand and departed, I stood in the snow, looking after him....

VIII

On the Wednesday of that same week the news of my father’s sudden and serious illness came to me in a telegram, and by the time I arrived at home it was too late to see him again alive.  It was my first experience with death, and what perplexed me continually during the following days was an inability to feel the loss more deeply.  When a child, I had been easily shaken by the spectacle of sorrow.  Had I, during recent years, as a result of a discovery that emotions arising from human relationships lead to discomfort and suffering, deliberately been forming a shell, until now I was incapable of natural feelings?  Of late I had seemed closer to my father, and his letters, though formal, had given evidence of his affection; in his repressed fashion he had made it clear that he looked forward to the time when I was to practise with him.  Why was it then, as I gazed upon his fine features in death, that I experienced no intensity of sorrow?  What was it in me that would not break down?  He seemed worn and tired, yet I had never thought of him as weary, never attributed to him any yearning.  And now he was released.

I wondered what had been his private thoughts about himself, his private opinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of real knowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an expensive education which had failed to impress upon me the simple, basic fact that life was struggle; that either development or retrogression is the fate of all men, that characters are never completely made, but always in the making.  I had merely a disconcerting glimpse of this truth, with no powers of formulation, as I sat beside my mother in the bedroom, where every article evoked some childhood scene.  Here was the dent in the walnut foot-board of the bed made, one wintry day, by the impact of my box of blocks; the big arm-chair, covered with I know not what stiff embroidery, which had served on countless occasions as a chariot driven to victory.  I even remembered how every Wednesday morning I had been banished from the room, which had been so large a part of my childhood universe, when Ella, the housemaid, had flung open all its windows and crowded its furniture into the hall.