Chapter 31

Nearly two years had passed since Ralph Marvell, waking from his long
sleep in the hot summer light of Washington Square, had found that the
face of life was changed for him.

In the interval he had gradually adapted himself to the new order of
things; but the months of adaptation had been a time of such darkness
and confusion that, from the vantage-ground of his recovered lucidity,
he could not yet distinguish the stages by which he had worked his way
out; and even now his footing was not secure.

His first effort had been to readjust his values--to take an inventory
of them, and reclassify them, so that one at least might be made to
appear as important as those he had lost; otherwise there could be no
reason why he should go on living. He applied himself doggedly to this
attempt; but whenever he thought he had found a reason that his mind
could rest in, it gave way under him, and the old struggle for a
foothold began again. His two objects in life were his boy and his book.
The boy was incomparably the stronger argument, yet the less serviceable
in filling the void. Ralph felt his son all the while, and all through
his other feelings; but he could not think about him actively and
continuously, could not forever exercise his eager empty dissatisfied
mind on the relatively simple problem of clothing, educating and amusing
a little boy of six. Yet Paul's existence was the all-sufficient reason
for his own; and he turned again, with a kind of cold fervour, to his
abandoned literary dream. Material needs obliged him to go on with
his regular business; but, the day's work over, he was possessed of a
leisure as bare and as blank as an unfurnished house, yet that was at
least his own to furnish as he pleased.

Meanwhile he was beginning to show a presentable face to the world, and
to be once more treated like a man in whose case no one is particularly
interested. His men friends ceased to say: "Hallo, old chap, I never saw
you looking fitter!" and elderly ladies no longer told him they were
sure he kept too much to himself, and urged him to drop in any afternoon
for a quiet talk. People left him to his sorrow as a man is left to an
incurable habit, an unfortunate tie: they ignored it, or looked over its
head if they happened to catch a glimpse of it at his elbow.

These glimpses were given to them more and more rarely. The smothered
springs of life were bubbling up in Ralph, and there were days when he
was glad to wake and see the sun in his window, and when he began to
plan his book, and to fancy that the planning really interested him. He
could even maintain the delusion for several days--for intervals each
time appreciably longer--before it shrivelled up again in a scorching
blast of