“I’m going to. But tell me a little more.” I thought I saw a shade of constraint on his face, and did not add, as I had meant to: “Tell me--because she interests me--what wore her down?” Instead, I asked: “How soon after Trant’s death did she remarry?” He seemed to make an effort of memory. “It was seven years ago, I think.” “And is Reardon here to-night?” “Yes; over there, talking to Mrs. Cumnor.” I looked across the broken groupings and saw a large glossy man with straw-coloured hair and a red face, whose shirt and shoes and complexion seemed all to have received a coat of the same expensive varnish. As I looked there was a drop in the talk about us, and I heard Mr. Reardon pronounce in a big booming voice: “What I say is: what’s the good of disturbing things? Thank the Lord, I’m content with what I’ve got!” “Is _that_ her husband? What’s he like?” “Oh, the best fellow in the world,” said Merrick, going. II Merrick had a little place at Riverdale, where he went occasionally to be near the Iron Works, and where he hid his week-ends when the world was too much with him. Here, on the following Saturday afternoon I found him awaiting me in a pleasant setting of books and prints and faded parental furniture. We dined late, and smoked and talked afterward in his book-walled study till the terrier on the hearth-rug stood up and yawned for bed. When we took the hint and moved toward the staircase I felt, not that I had found the old Merrick again, but that I was on his track, had come across traces of his passage here and there in the thick jungle that had grown up between us. But I had a feeling that when I finally came on the man himself he might be dead.... As we started upstairs he turned back with one of his abrupt shy movements, and walked into the study. “Wait a bit!” he called to me. I waited, and he came out in a moment carrying a limp folio. “It’s typewritten. Will you take a look at it? I’ve been trying to get to work again,” he explained, thrusting the manuscript into my hand. “What? Poetry, I hope?” I exclaimed. He shook his head with a gleam of derision. “No--just general considerations. The fruit of fifty years of inexperience.” He showed me to my room and said good-night. ***** The following afternoon we took a long walk inland, across the hills, and I said to Merrick what I could of his book. Unluckily there wasn’t much to say. The essays were judicious, polished and cultivated; but they lacked the freshness and audacity of his youthful work. I tried to conceal my opinion behind the usual generalisations, but he broke through these feints with a quick thrust to the heart of my meaning. “It’s worn down--blurred? Like the figures in the Cumnors’ tapestry?” I hesitated. “It’s a little too damned resigned,” I said. “Ah,” he exclaimed, “so am I. Resigned.” He switched the bare brambles by the roadside. “A man can’t serve two masters.” “You mean business and literature?”