Courier Democrat. (Langdon, N.D.) 1891-1920, 1907-05-02

bis apologies to Lillian.
At any other moment he might have
pondered over her manner of accept
Ing them-the easy Indifference with
which she let him go. But vastly
keener issues were claiming his atten-
ton, Issues whose results were wide
and black.
He left the theater and, refusing the
oyertures of cabmen, set himself to
walk to Chilcote's house. His face
Was hard and emotionless as he hur-
eied forward, but the chaos in his mind
found expression in the unevenness Of
bis pace. To a strong nan the con
fronting Of difficulties is never alarm
Ing and is often fraught with inspira-
Ton, but this applies essentially to the
difficulties evolved through the weak
Hess, the folly or the force of another;
when they arise from within the mat
presence of his own soul, and in that
presence alone, that a man may truly
measure himself.
AS Loder walked onward, treading
the whole familiar length Of traffic
filled street, he realized for the first
Gme that he was standing before that
solemn tribunal-that the hour had
dome when he must answer to himself
Tor himself. The longer and deeper an
oblivion the more painful the awaken
ing, For months the song Of self had
Beaten about his ears, deadening all
other sounds; now abruptly that song
Had ceased, not considerably, not lin
geringly, but with a suddenness that
H a1sss ''S succeeding '''SD\S ''' 81
He walked onward, keeping his di-
through tie a4e Is s a. h thoMas6
aKkual flames rose about his feet, and
whatever the result, whatever the fiber
Of the man who emerged from the Or
deal, the John Loder who had hewn
his way through the past weeks would
exist no more. The triumphant egotist,
the strong man who by his
strength had kept his eyes upon one
point, refusing to see in other direc-
tons, had ceased to be.
Keen though it was. his realization
of this crisis in his life had come with
characteristic slowness. When Lillian
Astrupp had given her dictum, when
the music of the orchestra had ceased
and the curtain risen on the second act
of the play, nothing but q sense Of
stupefaction had filled his mind. In
that moment the great song was 81
fenced, not by any %portentous episode,
not by any incident that could have
lent dignity to its end, but, with the
full Measure Of life's irony, by q trivial
social commonplace. In the first SEN
sation Of blank loss his faculties had
been numbed. In the quarter of an
hour that followed the rise of the cur
tain he had sat staring at the stage,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, filled
with the enormity of the void that sud-
denly surrounded him. Then from
habit, from constitutional tendency. he
had begun slowly and perseveringly
to draw first n thread and then an
other from the tangle of his thoughts,
TO forge with doubt and difficulty the
chain that was to draw him toward the
future.
1t was upon this same incomplete
and yet tenacious chain that his mind
worked as he %traversed the familiar
streets and at last gained the house he
had SO easily learned to call home.
AS he inserted the latchkey and felt
1t move smoothly in the lock a momen
tary revolt against his own Judgment,
his W censorship, swung him sharply
toward reaction. But 1t Is only the
blind who car walk without a tremor
on the edge of an abyss, and there vas
no longer a bandage across his eyes,
The reaction 1ared up like a strip of
lighted paper; then, like a strip OF
lighted paper, it dropped back to ashes
He pushed the door open and slowly
crossed the hall.
The mounting Of a staircase is often
b ndeX to a mans state of mind. AS
Loder assembled the stairs of Chilcote's
house his shoulders lacked their stiff.
moved as though his feet We're weight.
ed. He had ceased to be the man OF
achievement whose smallest opinion
compels consideration. In the privacy
Of solitude he was the mere human ffot
sam to which he had once compared
himself-the f1otsam that, dreaming II
has found a harbor, wakes to find itself
the prey Of the incoming tide.
he paused at the head Of the stairs tc
rally his resolutions. Then, still walk.
ing heavily, he passed down the corri
dor to Ewes room. 1t was suggestive
OF his character that, having made his
decision, he did not daily over it's per
Torrance. Without waiting to knock
he turned the handle and walked into
the room.
1t looked precisely as 1t always look
ed, but to Loder the rich, subdued col
Qr1ng of books and fowers-the whole
air of culture and repose that the place
conveyed-seemed to hold a deeper
meaning than before, and it was on thu
instant that his eyes, crossing the in
animate objects, rested on their owner
that the true force Of his position, thu
enormity Of the task before him, mad,
itself Dlain. Realization came tn hin