The descriptions of Japanese method and result were bald enough and full of error. Beneath them, as through a tangled undergrowth, he saw reality. Joining this new knowledge to remembered tales of Marco Polo, an electric spark flashed out. Old Marco was not a mere romancer, then, fellow of Sinbad and Munchausen, but a speaker of truths! There existed still, somewhere on earth, those marvellous countries with old, old cultures stored for us with prophecy, and a crowded generation through which must still run the living sap. If one went west, always west, to the edge of a great water, beyond that water he would reach Japan,--as once Columbus cut the sands of Hispaniola. At that first moment came into Todd's mind, half dreamily, though not the less imperishable because of shimmering mist, a determination to travel, some day, to that Far East, and see for himself what Marco Polo must have seen. Todd, after his marriage, continued to grow rich. The pretty cottage was abandoned for a great house near "town." It had hallways, a porte cochére, and a huge billiard-room which none but the cat ever visited. The town itself, in its spidery focus of busy railways, had not existed when Cyrus first came. He had often strolled, whistling, through future business blocks, and over smoking breweries. The Todds "grew up," as they termed it, with the place, Cyrus specially clinging with tenacious loyalty to the state which had made the background of so much happiness. As Gwendolen passed from a golden childhood into a maidenhood no less bright, Mrs. Todd was heard to murmur reluctantly mild objurgations against the "rawness" of the West, its unconventionality, and lack of true culture. At fourteen, Gwendolen was not only precocious in school-work and music, but her beauty promised to be of so unusual and unmistakable a type that Mrs. Todd took fond alarm, and declared that the child must go at once to New York, where she could be decently "finished." Gwendolen protested and wept. She had her father's happy heart, and thought that nothing could be quite so near perfection as their life at home. Mrs. Todd, secure in her conviction, proved inexorable. Cyrus was appealed to, and something in the dejected look of his face gave his wife a thrill of triumph. She soon prevailed, and Todd, in person, prepared to lead his one lamb to the sacrificial altar of "society." He left her on the brown-stone doorstep in New York, his heart far heavier than her own. The gay metropolis had no attractions then. He took the next train home, tasting his first real sorrow since his mother's death. He felt cold and chill at the thought of the big home emptied now of his idol.