This was what all his good offices had come to, this was what had come of his idiotic, vainglorious desire to do the right thing by Jane! He had simply let himself in for a lot of unhappiness. Strange, though, that he should be so consumed with jealousy when he wasn’t the least bit in love with Jane himself. It was absurd! Why, he had known her since the day she was born—how could he possibly be in love with her when he had known her all her life? He knew what love was—yes, indeed, he knew. He had been in love half a dozen times. He ought to know what love was—and certainly his feelings toward Jane were nothing like those he had experienced in bygone affairs of the heart. Gee whiz! What had suddenly got into him? Suddenly it came to him that he was selfish. That’s what it was—selfishness. He did not want her himself and yet he couldn’t bear the thought of letting some one else have her. Utter selfishness! Having arrived at this conclusion he smote his conscience heroically and proclaimed to the night that he would no more be jealous. Not even of Lansing. He would go on being Jane’s friend, and Lansing’s friend, and the friend of their children, and—This brought him up with a blinding jolt. Jane’s children! And Lansing’s! Something red and strangely sustained blurred his vision. He was oppressed by a feeling of almost intolerable loneliness as he strode down the dimly lighted street; a soft breeze blowing through the leaves of the young maples overhead suggested subdued, malicious laughter; automobile horns sounded like raucous guffaws; some blithering idiot was sounding taps on a mournful cornet far off in the night. He was going to lose Jane—he was going to lose Jane—he was going to lose Jane. Over and over again: he was going to lose Jane. Taps! Clay Street was almost deserted. The stores were closed for the night. A few pedestrians strolled leisurely along the sidewalks; a small group of loafers in front of Jackson’s cigar store, a detached policeman, three young girls waiting on a corner, widely separated automobiles drawn up to the curb, a man studying the billboards outside the closed door of the Star Moving Picture Palace. The town clock began to strike eleven. “Gee whiz!” sighed Oliver October, for all the world seemed as bleak to him as Clay Street was at midnight. Not since that night in June, over a year ago, had he taken the “short cut” swamp road on his way home from Jane’s. He avoided it after dark as if it were a graveyard—and he always hurried a little in passing a graveyard at night. He had never gotten over childhood’s fear of the ghosts that were supposed to come out and wander among the cold, white tombstones. There were no tombstones along the lonely swamp road, but he had a dread of it just the same.