To have been captain of the foot-ball team, which some student of

sociology has called the highest office in the free gift of the American

people, might seem glory enough for one life; but Richard Percival was

of such stuff that all past triumphs became dust and ashes. He was

greedy of the future. Now that the doors of college were fairly closed,

that career became to him but as a half-dreaming condition, before one

wakes.

On this summer evening, however, it was easy to prolong the dream, since

the hour was one for quiet of body and for wandering visions. The room

was large and suffused with that restfulness which comes to homes where

serene and thoughtful lives have been lived. There were long straight

lines; there was a scarcity of knickknacks; there were pictures gathered

because they were loved and not to fill a bare space on the wall; there

were books and books and books, many of them with the worn covers of

old friends. Here, clasped in the arms of another old friend of a chair,

half-sat, half-lay his mother, and near her lounged Ellery Norris, the

friend whose delicate mingling of love and admiration was as fragrant

wine to Dick, who believed in himself because others had always believed

in him. The dying twilight, laden with rose-spiciness and with the first

shrill notes of the warm night, came in through high narrow windows.

Everywhere was the sweet repose that comes after sweet activity, and the

center of it was the fragile woman who lay back in her chair, caressing

with light hand the head of the young man who sat upon the rug and

leaned against her knee.

Norris was looking at Mrs. Percival with a kind of wondering admiration

which the son saw with a touch of pity. Poor old Norris! It must have

been tough to grow up without a home. As for this fragrant type of

femininity, young Percival took it for granted--at least in the women

that belong to a man; and the other women hardly count.

Everything made Dick feel very tender toward his past, very well

satisfied with his present, very secure about his future. All would be

good. That was the natural order of the universe. He had always found it

easy to do things and to be a good deal of a personage.

He stared up silently at the space above the mantel where hung a

portrait that gazed back at him, with features pale in the fading light.

Singularly alike were the boyish face that looked up and the boyish face

that looked down, though the painted Percival, a little idealistic about

the eyes, wholly firm about the mouth, appeared the more determined of

the two. Perhaps this came from the shoulder-straps, the blue uniform,

and the military squareness of the shoulders.




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