But it had been a kindly, patient family. My father was one of the best known and most highly honored among Canadian public men. As he had married an American, I had a good many cousins in New York, though I had not made myself known to any of them since coming there to live. I didn’t want them. Had I met one of them in the street, I should have passed without speaking; but, as it happened, I never met one. I saw their names in the papers, and that was all. My father and mother had had five children, of whom I was the fourth. My two brothers were married, prosperous and respected—one a lawyer in Montreal, the other a banker in Toronto. My elder sister was married to a colonel in the British army; the younger one—the only member of the family younger than myself—still lived at home. We three sons were all graduates of McGill, in addition to which I had been sent to the Beaux Arts in Paris. Out of that I had come with some degree of credit; and there had been a year in which I was in sight—oh, very distant sight!—of the beginning of the fulfilment of my childhood’s ambition to revolutionize the art of architecture in Canada. But in the second year that vision went out; and in the third came the night on my brother Jerry’s door-step. I had nothing to complain of. The family had borne with me—and borne with me. When we reached the time when I was supposed to be earning my own living and my father’s allowance came to an end, my mother, who had some money of her own, kept it up. She would be keeping it up still if she knew where I was—but she didn’t know. From the moment of leaving Montreal I decided to carry out Jerry’s injunction. They should neither see my face nor hear my name again. I didn’t stop to consider how cruel this would be to the best mother a man ever had—to say nothing of the best father—or rather, when I did stop to consider it it seemed to me that I was taking the kindest course. I had no confidence in myself or in the future. New surroundings and associations would not give me a new heart, whatever hopes those who wished me well might be building on the change. For a new heart I needed something which I hadn’t got and saw no means of getting. _CHAPTER II_ Somewhere about dusk I fell asleep. It was dark when I woke up. It was dark and still and sultry, as it often is in New York in the middle of June. The lamps were lit in the Park, and in their glow shadowy forms moved stealthily. When they went in twos I took them to be lovers; when they went alone I put them down as prowlers of the night. I didn’t know what they were after, but whatever it might be I was sure it was no good. Not that that mattered to me! I had long been in a situation where I couldn’t be particular. When I had risen and stretched myself I, too, moved stealthily, dogged by a crime I hadn’t yet committed, but of which the guilt was already in the air.