On, on they jolted and jarred, dropping along the cross streets a cargo of indifferent souls, and taking in a new cargo of white-ribboned men, who talked in loud voices or spat ruminatively over the floors. Sommers sank back listless. It was well that he had taken this way of entering the new life. To have galloped south through the cool parks would have been absurd, like playing at charity. This was the life of the people,--not the miserably poor, but the mean and small, the mass in this, our prosperous country. Through the dirty, common avenues, without one touch of beauty, they were destined to travel all their days, and he with them. He shut his eyes and thought of the woman to whom he was journeying. Hers was the face he had seen in imagination in all his moods of revolt, of disgust with the privileged. She was the figure, paramount, of those who had soul enough to thirst for beauty, happiness, life, and to whom they were denied. The machine of society whirled some aloft--the woman he had just left--but it dragged her down. It was the machine that maddened him. He was taking himself away from those who governed the machine, who ran it and oiled it, and turned it to their own pleasures. He had chosen to be of the multitude whom the machine ground. The brutal axioms of the economists urged men to climb, to dominate, and held out as the noblest ideal of the great commonwealth the right of every man to triumph over his brother. If the world could not be run on any less brutal plan than this creed of _success, success_, then let there be anarchy--anything. With a final groan the cable train came to a halt, and the hypnotic sleep of the pilgrimage through Cottage Grove Avenue ended. Sommers started up--alert, anxious, eager to see _her_ once more, the glow of enchantment, of love renewed in his soul. Yet at the very end of his journey he was fearful for the first time. How could they meet, after the foul scene with Preston? Mrs. Ducharme opened the cottage door, and recognizing the young doctor in the twilight sighed with relief. Her placid countenance was ruffled. "Where is Mrs. Preston?" he demanded hastily. "She's gone out for a moment. I made her take a turn." "How is Mr. Preston?" Mrs. Ducharme's face assumed a frightened expression. She spoke in low tones, as if the patient might still overhear. "He's rested for good, poor man! He won't want no more liquor this life, I guess." Then more solemnly she ended, "He's at peace."