So it was with a troubled heart that he applied himself to more rigorous professional endeavor. Like most architects he had pursued certain lines of work because orders had come to him, and the chances of employment had ordained that his services should be sought for small churches, school-houses and kindred buildings in the surrounding country rather than for more elaborate and costly structures. On these undertakings it was his habit to expend abundant thought and devotion. The class of work was to his taste, for, though the funds at his disposal were not always so large as he desired for artistic effects, yet he enjoyed the opportunity of showing that simplicity need not be homely and disenchanting, but could wear the aspect of grace and poetry. Latterly he had been requested to furnish designs for some blocks of houses in the outlying wards of the city, where the owners sought to provide attractive, modern flats for people with moderate means. Various commissions had come to him, also, to design decorative work, which interested him and gave scope to his refined and aspiring imagination, and he was enthusiastically absorbed in preparing his competitive plans for the building of Wetmore College. His time was already well occupied by the matters which he had in hand. That is, he had enough to do and yet did not feel obliged to deny himself the luxury of deliberate thoroughness in connection with each professional undertaking. Save for the thought that he must needs earn more in order to please Selma, he would have been completely happy in the slow but flattering growth of his business, and in feeling his way securely toward greater success. Now, however, he began to ask himself if it were not possible to hasten this or that piece of work in order to afford himself the necessary leisure for new employment. He began also to consider whether he might not be able, without loss of dignity, to put himself in the way of securing more important clients. To solicit business was not to be thought of, but now and again he put the question to himself whether he had not been too indifferent as to who was who, and what was what, in the development of his business.