He did not want to see the girl who had taught him that lesson. He only wanted to look at this house in which she lived as another man’s wife. But, as he walked on past, he did see her. She was standing on the little side verandah. And in the vivid picture of her which Felix’s eyes caught before he looked hastily away, he saw that she had a baby in her arms. She was looking down at the baby, shaking her head teasingly above it so that stray locks of her yellow hair touched its face. It uttered a faint cry, and she shook her curly head again, and looked up, smiling. But she did not see Felix. She was looking down the street past him. She was waiting for someone—for the owner of this house, her husband; waiting for the man who was the father of her child. This Felix saw and felt with a bewildered and hurt mind in the moment before he turned his eyes away to stare at the sidewalk in front of him. He walked on, and in another moment he must perforce enter the field of her vision as he passed along the street in which her eyes were searching for another man. He braced himself, threw his head back, and commenced to whistle a careless tune. If she saw him, if she noted the familiar slouch of his hat as he passed out of her sight, she would never know that he had seen—or cared. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ II. “Bon Voyage!” 1 THE family were apparently not at all surprised when, at the supper-table, Felix announced his sudden decision. “Well, I knew you’d be going one of these days,” his brother Ed remarked. That seemed strange to Felix, who had kept his Chicago intentions carefully to himself all that year.... And his brother Jim, who was working again in spite of his lameness, was quite converted from his supper-table querulousness by the announcement. “When I was in Chicago—” he said, and told stories of the Chicago of ten years ago, where he had tried briefly to gain a foothold. It remained in his mind, it seemed, not as a failure, but as a glorious excursion.... Alice, Ed’s wife, was enchanted. Her cheeks glowed, and she asked endless questions. It appeared that none of them had the slightest doubt of Felix’s ultimate, and splendid, success. It really seemed as if they envied him! And all the while, Felix was thinking what an ironic spectacle he would present if he returned home in a month or two. He clenched his fists under the table-edge, and swore to himself that he would never—never—make that confession of failure.... “You must write to your mother and tell her all about it, Felix,” said Alice.