On the evening after his arrival he sat in Eben Tollman's study with two other men who were also classmates. Tollman himself was still at the manse, and his guests were beguiling themselves with cigars which he had furnished, and whiskey which he had not--and upon which he would have frowned. Over his glass Carton, the corporation lawyer, irrelevantly suggested: "Eben seems a boy again. It makes us chaps whose children are almost grown, feel relegated to an elder generation." "Miss Williams," observed Henry Standing, "has a pretty wit and a prettier face. I wanted to say to her: 'Now, my dear child, if I were twenty years younger--' and then I caught myself up short. I chanced to remember that Eben _isn't_ twenty years younger himself." Carton nodded thoughtfully. "I can't help feeling that a thing like that is always a bit chancy. Eben was a sober-sided kid in his cradle and the girl is all fire and bloom. Fortunately it doesn't seem to have occurred to her that there's any disparity." He paused, then demanded: "Ebbett, you're a psychologist. What do you think?" Dr. Ebbett took his cigar from his lips and studied it with deliberation. When he spoke his words were laconic. "I think it's as dangerous as hell." "But a young wife will rejuvenate him and keep him young, won't she?" "It's rarely been done before," retorted the doctor drily. "Moreover, it's not a question of making him young again. A man of our friend's type is born old." "Oh, come now," protested Carton. "What's the matter with his type?" Dr. Ebbett paused, listening to the blizzard's shrieking outside, then he replied evenly: "He's too intensely a New Englander. The somber and narrow man represses one-half of his being and straightway sets up a Mr. Hyde in ambush to make war on his Dr. Jekyl. Our lunatic asylums are full of patients whose repressions have driven them mad. The whole Puritan code is a religion of repression--and it's viciously dangerous." Dr. Ebbett paused and sent a cloud of cigar smoke outward. His voice abandoned the lecture-room professionalism into which it had fallen. "But, as you say, that is all academic. Perhaps the bride has youth and humor enough to leaven the whole lump." Much less abstruse were the thoughts of Eleanor Kent: she of the violet eyes, as she listened to Mary Barrascale's eulogy of Eben Tollman on the day before the wedding. Eleanor could not forget moments which had seemingly escaped Mary's observation: moments when Conscience, believing herself unnoticed, allowed a look of fright to come to her eyes and a line to circle her lips. "When you told me in your letter that he was so much older than you," declared Mary, her enthusiasm bubbling as the three engaged themselves over the last details of packing, "I simply couldn't bear it,--but he isn't old at all. He's simply charming, and he has _such_ a rare distinction of manner. I feel as if I were talking to a Prime Minister whenever we have a chat."