Many opportunities had come to Brent, and it was not all his fault that most of them had been neglected. His capacity for achievement was as an arm perpetually carried in a sling; no one's fingers had untied the knot and massaged the cramped muscles, nor had anyone's lips bidden him strike the right sort of blow. His mother breathed his name when a trained nurse had laid him down beside her on the bed; and that was the only time he might have heard her voice. His father was a man so threaded in the loom of finance that the rearing of a baby boy seemed wasted energy for one of his activities. The governess whom he employed to assume this duty came with recommendations; that was all--came with recommendations. And the boy's days were without intelligent direction of any kind. The only trait in his character which this governess strongly developed, was a desire to hide from every one his deepest and best impulses. Since one day, when his four-year-old arms had clasped a homeless puppy hurt by a passing wagon, and she had poked her finger and laughed at his tears in order to keep his clothes from becoming worse soiled, his generous side shrank back into itself and froze. Then he began to clasp this newly bruised thing--a little boy's wounded nobility; so jealously guarding it from the cruelty of other laughs, from other curled lips and fingers of scorn, that few might have suspected it lived in him at all. Later in life there appeared an object he might have cherished--the girl of whom he had told Jane; but this did not leave the regret he tried to make himself believe. He had never been able to rise above a lingering disappointment because her fingers made no effort to untie the knot;--rather, had she drawn it tighter by applauding those things which inherently he realized needed rebuking. For in his soul lived a voice comparing her to an ideal known only to his dreams--a being, somewhere, who would tear off the sling with brave and loving hands, and not be content to see him drift. His closely guarded better nature was persistently pleading with him to face about, while her pouting lips imperiously demanded his mornings and afternoons for her entertainment. Then, very softly, a consciousness began to dawn upon this little romance, showing its glitter to be the veriest tinsel; and, so it was, in a make-believe fervor of self-righteousness, he pressed the pseudo crown of martyrdom upon his brow and "stepped aside."