I went to work. The sort of people who are ever on the lookout for some excuse for going to pieces, and the world is well sprinkled with them, eagerly seize on disappointment in love as precisely what they were seeking. At the risk of being thought cold and hard, I will say that it is extremely fortunate for Joan that she escaped the Darby who goes smash for disappointed love of her. If Joan had yielded to him, Darby would simply have been put to the trouble of finding another pretext for throwing up his job and taking to drink. I confess it did not occur to me to give up and fall to boozing and brooding. I should not have dared do that; for, you see, I was really in love--not with myself, but with Mary Kirkwood. I went to work. I filled my days and my evenings with business engagements that compelled both my time and my thought. I took on an extra secretary. I started to build a railway. I laid out an addition to the manufacturing city I had founded. I organized a farm for teaching city slum boys to be farmers. I engaged in several entirely new mining and manufacturing enterprises. The result was that when I went to bed, I slept; and when they awakened me in the morning my brain was at work before my head was well off the pillow. And still-- You can distract your mind from the aching tooth, but it aches on. All this time I was receiving weekly letters from Edna and Margot--long and loving letters. I read them, and you may possibly imagine I was filled with shame and remorse. Not at all. My wife and my daughter had rather exaggerated my vanity. Only vanity could gull a husband and father in my position into fancying himself the object of such luxuriant affection as those letters professed. If you have lies to tell, take my advice and don’t _write_ them. I can’t explain the mystery, but a lie which, spoken and heard, passes out and passes in as smoothly as a greased shuttle in its greased groove, becomes a glaring falsehood when set down in black and white. The only effect of those letters upon me was to make my sick heart the sadder with the realization of what I had missed in losing Mary Kirkwood. And I kept wondering what it was that Edna and Margot were slathering me for. * * * * *