After that episode, he resigned his hope of romance. Fate was perverse and offered him impossible combinations, and he had not the energy to seek and seize for himself. So love, like the other big prizes of life, eluded him, and at thirty-three he was a confirmed bachelor as well as a professional idler. He still pursued the graceful, aimless flirtations that are the small change of intercourse at dances and dinners--just as he still read Theocritus--but neither his heart nor his mind engaged in any more serious endeavor. And yet, every now and then, he felt a faint desire for something more, for something that should not be a pastime, nor a mere bread-and-butter chore--something that would demand and exhaust the best of him and give him in return the pride of work worth the doing and doing well. This afternoon the desire was more than usually persistent, and it had held him at his desk long after school hours were over, fingering his pen and ink bottle, glancing through the weekly essays which had that day been handed in for criticism, and turning the leaves of a history of English literature with which he had vainly striven to awake enthusiasm in the minds of his class. The school-room was a pleasant place, as school-rooms go. There were potted plants on the window sills and a few good engravings on the walls, and the afternoon sunshine was streaming gaily in. But to Peter the room was the disillusioning scene of unwilling labors--both on the part of his pupils and himself--and its chalky atmosphere was heavy and depressing. "What's the use of pretending that _this_ is a 'life-work'--a 'noble profession'?" he muttered, after his casual examination of a particularly discouraging essay. "They don't _want_ to learn. They only want to get through and away. After Sheila graduates, I'll he without a single responsive pupil. For I won't get another like her--not in years, and probably never. Why don't I chuck it all? Why _don't_ I go away? There's nothing to _stay_ for! But my confounded antipathy to a tussle in the hurly-burly of my fellow-men----" At that moment a tap sounded upon the door panel. "Come in," called Peter carelessly, supposing that a pupil had returned for some forgotten possession. And he did not even look around until an amused voice inquired: "So absorbed, Professor Peter?" Then he turned to see Mrs. Caldwell, an old-fashioned picture in silvery gray, smiling at him from the doorway. "I've come for a serious talk," said she, when he had seated her beside the sunniest window and established himself close by. "Well," he answered ruefully, "you've come to the right place and the right person. I was just considering--in these scholarly surroundings--how I am wasting my life!" "Really?" And she beamed on him hopefully. "Because that's the beginning of better things. You _could_ amount to so much, Peter!" But he shook his head: "Not here. And I'm too lazy to leave Shadyville."