“Well, I want Mr. Farley now,” Dorothy pouted. The fatigue of the journey had begun to tell on her. Farley walked down to the car and saw his friends settled in their places. As the train pulled out of the station he stood on the platform and watched till it disappeared. Then he sighed and walked slowly back to the street. How fortunate some men were in this world, he thought. Douglas Briggs was an example. He had everything that could contribute to happiness--success, power, money, a happy home, a wife who must be a perpetual inspiration, and children. Farley cared comparatively little for money or power; he was content to follow his life in the world as it had been laid out for him; but sometimes he grew depressed as he thought that the deeper satisfactions, the love of a wife and of children, he should probably never know. For the past year this feeling had become a conviction. He encouraged no morbid sentiment about it, however. He had plenty of interests and pleasures; his work alone brought rewards that were worth striving for, and in his friendships, his interests and in books he found distraction and solace. He was one of those men who are never tempted to experiment with their emotions; so he had kept his mind wholesome, and he had never known the disappointment and the bitterness of those who try to substitute self-indulgence for happiness. Farley himself hardly realized how much his view of life was influenced by his attitude toward women. He had the exalted view of women that only those men can take who have kept their lives clean. He had first become interested in Douglas Briggs through seeing Briggs’s wife. He thought there must be remarkable qualities in a man who could win the love of a woman like that. Until within a few months he had seen Helen only a few times. Now he felt as if he had known her always. He looked back on himself during the years before he first saw her as if he had been someone else, with a feeling very like pity. There were also moments of weakness when he thought with pity of himself as he had been since knowing her. If Farley had realized the misery he had caused Helen Briggs he would have experienced an agony of regret. On the way to Waverly Helen kept thinking of her talk with him on the train. The revelation of his own character that Farley had given made Helen compare him with her husband. She had never before appreciated the rare qualities of the journalist, his inflexible honesty, his candor, his generous admirations, his supreme unselfishness. At the thought of his devotion to her husband Helen felt her face flush with shame. Douglas, of course, knew how much Farley admired him; but Douglas was used to admiration; he had received it all his life. XIII