to know that his absence had a marketable value. On the contrary, he marketed it.
Of course Mr. Montrose was not to be classed in with gentry of this stamp. By no means. Yet something in each did remind one of the other beside the odor of stale tobacco—a certain plausibility, a sauvity of manner, a valorous determination to ride the waves of misfortune (with which you somehow always felt yourself to be guiltily implicated) in true British fashion, undeterred by other people's opinions.
This, then, was the Madonna's portion dealt out by blind Fortune! Injustice befitting our station, that leaves us unbesmirched, we can endure, but to be tied down to inferior quality—to groveling cares and blind creators of them, that is to carry dead weight through all one's life.
Little by little the sordid tale unrolled itself. I saw that Mrs. Montrose's genius, denied opportunity to be Wife by the littleness of her husband's nature, had flowed into Motherhood. At this point of contact, at least, the world had not come to an end yet, but still held possibilities. Possibilities, did I say? When your boy of promise sells his youth at
