A year of foreign travel—illicit though it might have been considered in certain obnoxious quarters—had changed Johnathan in many ways, however. For one thing, it had radically revised his ideas about God. The myriad millions of Asia, in their sordid, gnat-like existence, had caused him to wonder just how “personal” God really was. Anyhow, his conscience was clear about leaving home in so far as God was concerned. In the first place, he had done his full duty by his children. He had given them a home, food for their growing bodies, clothes for their backs. He had made them attend divine services, he had kept their morals clean and their minds pure. It had been an awful ordeal to keep Nathan away from The Sex. Still he had managed it. That Nathan had promptly married at twenty-one had nothing to do with Johnathan. Johnathan had only been responsible for the boy until maturity. Not one moment after! The boy had become a man then. He had passed out of the father’s jurisdiction. If he had made a hard bed, let him lie in it, indeed. It only went to show he should have taken his loving father’s counsel to heart. As for leaving his wife, they had nothing in common, with the children married. Why, then, should they live together? Beside, had he not left her in undisputed possession of a ten-thousand-dollar house? Let her sell that house if she so desired and live on the money. Ten thousand dollars should keep her the rest of her life. In fact, Johnathan flattered himself he had done rather handsomely by his wife. No cause for self-execration there! Then how about the box-shop? Ah, yes! The box-shop! Well, it was this way: In the beginning he had saved eighteen hundred dollars of hard-earned money in spite of his wife’s spendthrift habits, and bought the box-shop. He had obligated himself for thirty-two hundred dollars more in notes. And, thank God, somehow he had paid them. But it had been with his own money, before he turned the factory over to the corporation and accepted stock. He had been very clever in that transfer. He had taken thirteen thousand dollars’ worth of stock for the five thousand equity he had originally held in the business; well, it belonged to him. If he was cute on a trade, it was the other fellow’s fault if the other fellow didn’t watch out and found himself cheated. Then had come those hectic years when his boy’s ramifications had “grayed his hair.”