Finally he got up, turned on the lights, took off his coat, found Sue's trunk behind the burlap screen and dragged it to the middle of the room. He began with the coverings of the couch-bed; then went into the bedroom and folded blankets, coverlet, sheets and comforter. Sue did not own a great variety of clothing; but what was hanging in the closet he brought out, folded and packed away. He took down the few pictures and laid them flat within the upper tray of the trunk. In an hour living-room, bedroom and closet were bare. The books he piled by the door; first guessing at the original cost of each and adding the figures in his head. Nothing remained but the bureau in the bedroom. He stood before this a long moment before he could bring himself to open the top drawer. To Peter, to Zanin, to Hy Howe, the matter would have been simple. Years back those deeply experienced young bachelors had become familiar with all manner of little feminine mysteries; but to Henry Bates these were mysteries still. The color came hotly to his mild countenance; his pulses beat faster and faster. He recalled with painful vividness, the last occasion on which Reason, normally his God, had deserted him. That was the day, not so long ago by the calendar, he had turned against all that had been his life--dropped his books in the North River, donned the costly new suit that Peter's tailor had made for him and set forth to propose marriage to Sue Wilde. And with chagrin that grew and burned his face to a hotter red he recalled that he had never succeeded in making himself clear to her. To this day she did not know that his reflective, emotionally unsophisticated heart had been torn with love of her. Why, blindly urging marriage, he had actually talked her into that foolish engagement with Peter!... What was the quality that enabled men to advance themselves--in work, in love? Whatever it might be, he felt he had it not. Peter had it. Zanin had it. Hy had it. Sue herself! Each was a person, something of a force, a positive quality in life. But he, Henry Bates, was a negative thing. For years he had sat quietly among his books, content to watch others forge past him and disappear up the narrow lanes of progress. Until now, at thirty-two, he found himself a hesitant unfruitful man without the gift of success. “It is a gift,” he said aloud; and then sat on the springs of the stripped bed and stared at his ineffectual face in the mirror. “The trouble with me,” he continued, “is plain lack of character. Better Hy's trifling conquests; better Zanin's driving instinct to get first; better Peter's hideously ungoverned ego; than--nothing!”