"O Archie," she cried, "how glad I am to have you speak like that! Let the world go, Archie dear, before it lets you go. Let us go from this hateful life, you and I. If we could only be poor again, and live in some quiet place, we could be happy yet. You've never got any happiness yet out of all your money that I can see, and you never will. Can't we start again, dear, and won't you forgive Arthur, and have him back?" She was on her knees beside him, her head bowed, or she would have seen the swift hardening of his face. "Don't be a fool!" he said harshly. "Is it folly?" she cried. "Yes, the silliest of folly. A man can't turn back if he would, and I don't really want to. He must go on to the end of things." "Ah! the end--what will that be, Archie?" "God knows. But there's one thing I know, and that is, that a man doesn't fight all his life to get something, just to throw it away upon a whim. I'd think shame of myself if I didn't fight my battle out to the last stroke. You and me have never agreed, and we don't agree now." "If you'd only forgive Arthur," she persisted. "I never forgive fools. I reckon God doesn't do that either. He forgives sinners, but not fools. Arthur's a fool!" He closed the Book with a bang, and rose. His face was dark and troubled. His wife left the room without another word. From the church across the road there came the soft music of the evening hymn. He listened, with dilated eyes, keeping time to the familiar rhythm with extended finger. He breathed a long sigh as it ceased. "It's a queer thing to think about, that in fifty years' time not one of those folk will be alive," he reflected. "All gone like--how did the words run?--like a ship on the water that leaves no trace. I wonder where Scales will be? Nowhere near where I am, I hope. Scales is a beast!" And then once more The Fear returned. He saw it like a dark-winged phantom, pale-faced, threatening, gliding up the road, standing at his gate. It stood there a long time, and he wondered if the people coming out of church could see it too. The wings trailed the ground, and it wore a black hood. The face beneath the hood he could not see, but he could hear the words softly uttered, "What hath pride profited us? Or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us?" And the evening hymn, which had ceased, seemed to begin again, attenuated like a whisper from some organ in the air, a frail, slow, unearthly melody: Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away; Change and decay in all around I see...