When he saw Adelaide and his mother their anxious looks made him furious. So! They knew how helpless he was; they were pitying him. _Pitying_ him! Pitying _him_! He just tasted his coffee; with scowling brow he hastened to the stables for his saddle horse and rode away alone. "Wait a few minutes and I'll come with you," called Adelaide from the porch as he galloped by. He pretended not to hear. When clear of the town he "took it out" on his horse, using whip and spur until it gripped the bit and ran away. He fought savagely with it; at a turn in the road it slipped and fell, all but carrying him under. He was in such a frenzy that if he had had a pistol he would have shot it. The chemical action of his crisis precipitated in a black mass all the poison his nature had been absorbing in those selfish, supercilious years. So long as that poison was held in suspense it was imperceptible to himself as well as to others. But now, there it was, unmistakably a poison. At the sight his anger vanished. "I'm a beast!" he ejaculated, astonished. "And here I've been imagining I was a fairly decent sort of fellow. What the devil have I been up to, to make me like this?" He walked along the road, leading his horse by the bridle slipped over his arm. He resumed his reverie of the earlier morning, and began a little less dimly to see his situation from the new viewpoint. "I deserve what I'm getting," he said to himself. Then, at a twinge from the resentment that had gone too deep to be ejected in an instant, he added: "But that doesn't excuse _him_." His father was to blame for the whole ugly business--for his plight within and without. Still, fixing the blame was obviously unimportant beside the problem of the way out. And for that problem he, in saner mood, began to feel that the right solution was to do something and so become in his own person a somebody, instead of being mere son of a somebody. "I haven't got this shock a minute too soon," he reflected. "I must take myself in hand. I--" "Why, it's you, Arthur, isn't it?" startled him. He looked up, saw Mrs. Whitney coming toward him. She was in a winter walking suit, though the day was warm. She was engaged in the pursuit that was the chief reason for her three months' retirement to the bluffs overlooking Saint X--the preservation of her figure. She hated exercise, being by nature as lazy, luxurious, and self-indulgent physically as she was alert and industrious mentally. From October to July she ate and drank about what she pleased, never set foot upon the ground if she could help it, and held her tendency to hips in check by daily massage. From July to October she walked two or three hours a day, heavily dressed, and had a woman especially to attend to her hair and complexion, in addition to the _masseuse_ toiling to keep her cheeks and throat firm for the fight against wrinkles and loss of contour.