In due season, Albert went off to school, according to his father's plans; and it was not the school which Adele McComas had hoped to see Albert enter a little before her own boys should leave it. Raymond, after another year of daily attentions to Albert's small daily concerns, was glad to have him away. He did not see his boy's mother a frequent visitor at this school, nor did he purpose being a frequent visitor himself. The establishment was approved, well-recommended: let it do its work unaided, unhindered.

No, Adele McComas never saw Albert at the school of her predilection; indeed, it was not long after the choice had been made that she lost all opportunity of seeing anything at all. She withered out, like a high-colored, hardy-seeming flower that belies all promise, and died when her little girl was months short of four.

Her name was on the new monument within six weeks. It was the third title="190" name. That of Johnny's father had lately been placed above that of his mother, and that of his wife was now clearly legible upon the opposite side of the shaft's base. Some of Johnny's friends saw in this promptitude a high mark of respect and affection; others felt a haste, almost undue, to turn the new erection into a bulletin of "actualities"; and a few surmised that had the work not been done with promptitude it might have come to be done in a leisurely fashion that spelled neglect: if it were to be done, 't were well it were done quickly—a formal token of regard checked off and disposed of.

During Albert's first year at his school his mother made two or three appearances. She was exigent, and she showed herself to the school authorities as fertile in blandishments. The last of her visits was made in a high-powered touring-car. Raymond heard of this, and warned the school head against a possible attempt at abduction.

The second year opened more quietly. One visit—a visit without eagerness and obviously lacking in any fell intent, and that was all. It was fair to surmise that this once-urgent, once-vehement mother had developed a newer and more compelling interest.

She had made herself a figure at Adele McComas's funeral—or, at least, others had made her a figure at it. She began to be seen here and there in the company of the widower, and it was reported privately to me that she had been perceived standing side by side with him in decorous contemplation, as it were in a sort of transient, elegiac revery À deux, before the monument. It was no surprise, therefore, when we heard, two months later, that they had married.

"That stable-boy!" said Raymond. "After—me!"

The expression was strong, and I did not care to assent.

Instead, I began:—

"And now, whatever may or may not have been, everything is—"

"Everything is right, at last!" he concluded for me.

"And if they—those two—are put in the right," he went on, "I suppose I am put in the wrong—and more in the wrong than ever!"

He stared forward, across his littered table, beyond his bookcases, through his thick-lensed glasses, as if confronting the stiffening legend of a husband too old, too dry, too unpliable; the victim, finally, of a sudden turn that was peculiarly malapropos and disrelishing, the head of a household tricked rather ridiculously before the world.

Reserve now began to grow on him. He simplified relationships and saw fewer people. Before these, and before the many at a greater remove, he would maintain a cautious dignity as a detached and individual human creature, as a man,—however much, in the world's eyes, he might have seemed to fail as a husband.