Their next interview touched again his domestic affairs. He had telegraphed Marian to come home without eliciting a reply, and the next day he found in a Chicago newspaper a spirited and much-beheadlined account of the smashing of the Willings' automobile in a collision. It seemed that they had run into Chicago for a day's shopping and had met with this misadventure on one of the boulevards. The Willings' chauffeur had been seriously injured. Miss Marian Bassett, definitely described as the daughter of Morton Bassett, the well-known Indiana politician, had been of the party. Allen Thatcher was another guest of the Willings, a fact which added to Bassett's anger. He had never visited his hatred of Thatcher upon Allen, whom he had regarded as a harmless boy not to be taken seriously; but the conjunction of his daughter's name with that of his enemy's son in a newspaper of wide circulation in Indiana greatly enraged him. It was bound to occasion talk, and he hated publicity. The Willings were flashy people who had begun to spend noisily the money earned for them by an automobile patent. The indictment he drew against Marian contained many "counts." He could not discuss the matter with his wife; he carefully kept from her the newspaper story of the smash-up. The hotel to which the Willings had retired for repairs was mentioned, and Bassett resolved to go to Chicago and bring Marian home. The best available train passed Waupegan Station at midnight, and he sat alone on his veranda that evening with anger against Marian still hot in his heart. He had yet to apprise Mrs. Bassett of his intended journey, delaying the moment as long as possible to minimize her inevitable querulous moanings. Blackford was in his room studying, and Bassett had grimly paced the veranda for half an hour when the nurse came down with a request that he desist from his promenade, as it annoyed Mrs. Bassett in her chamber above. He thereupon subsided and retired to the darkest corner of the veranda. A four-hour vigil lay before him, and he derived no calm from the still stars that faintly shadowed the quiet waters below. He was assailed by torments reserved for those who, having long made others writhe without caring that they suffered, hear the swish of the lash over their own heads. He had only lately been conscious of his growing irritability. He hated men who yield to irritation; it was a sign of weakness, a failure of self-mastery. He had been carried on by a strong tide, imagining that he controlled it and guided it. He had used what he pleased of the apparatus of life, and when any part of the mechanism became unnecessary, he had promptly discarded it. It angered him to find that he had thrown away so much, that the mechanism was no longer as responsive as it had been. The very peace of the night grated upon him.