“I must have caused you considerable outlay, one way and another,” he said. “I want to defray that, Bassett, as soon as I've figured out some way to get at my bank account.” Bassett jerked out a pillow and thumped it. “Forget it.” Then he grinned. “You can fix that when you get your estate, old man. Buy a newspaper and let me run it!” He bent over the davenport and put the pillow in place. “All you'll have to do is to establish your identity. The institutions that got it had to give bond. I hope you're not too long for this bed.” But he looked up at Dick's silence, to see him looking at him with a faint air of amusement over his pipe. “They're going to keep the money, Bassett.” Bassett straightened and stared at him. “Don't be a damned fool,” he protested. “It's your money. Don't tell me you're going to give it to suffering humanity. That sort of drivel makes me sick. Take it, give it away if you like, but for God's sake don't shirk your job.” Dick got up and took a turn or two around the room. Then, after an old habit, he went to the window and stood looking out, but seeing nothing. “It's not that, Bassett. I'm afraid of the accursed thing. I might talk a lot of rot about wanting to work with my hands. I wouldn't if I didn't have to, any more than the next fellow. I might fool myself, too, with thinking I could work better without any money worries. But I've got to remember this. It took work to make a man of me before, and it will take work to keep me going the way I intend to go, if I get my freedom.” Sometime during the night Bassett saw that the light was still burning by the davenport, and went in. Dick was asleep with a volume of Whitman open on his chest, and Bassett saw what he had been reading. “You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you short-lived ennuis; Ah, think not you shall finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth. It shall march forth over-mastering, till all lie beneath me, It shall stand up, the soldier of unquestioned victory.” Bassett took the book away and stood rereading the paragraph. For the first time he sensed the struggle going on at that time behind Dick's quiet face, and he wondered. Unquestioned victory, eh? That was a pretty large order. XL Leslie Ward had found the autumn extremely tedious. His old passion for Nina now and then flamed up in him, but her occasional coquetries no longer deceived him. They had their source only in her vanity. She exacted his embraces only as tribute to her own charm, her youth, her fresh young body. And Nina out of her setting of gaiety, of a thumping piano, of chattering, giggling crowds, of dancing and bridge and theater boxes, was a queen dethroned. She did not read or think. She spent the leisure of her mourning period in long hours before her mirror fussing with her hair, in trimming and retrimming hats, or in the fastidious care of her hands and body.