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Rome has much to offer. She offered much to Broke that April morning. But all he took was the aged Appian Way, tramping this steadily with an empty pipe between his teeth and the thin rain playing on his face. He had no eyes for his flank-guards, no thoughts for the pomp of traffic that had swept or stalked or stumbled over his present path to build a world. He was aware only of a proud, passionate face, angry, yet exquisite in anger—the face of a spoiled child.

Sixteen miles he covered before he returned to the hotel, hungry and healthily tired, but with a clear brain and steadfast heart.

He had been checking and weighing many things. He had reviewed his married life, faced the mistakes he had made and steeled himself to pay for every one of them. He had found himself wanting in patience, slow to make due allowance, visiting Eve with ills which his own shortcomings had begotten. More. The bill his heart had run up was truly formidable. To do his darling pleasure he had let everything rip for month after flashing month. He had smiled at this extravagance, abetted that whim, encouraged that vanity. They had drifted—gone as they pleased. The trivial round had been bought off; the common task compounded with. Discipline had become a dead letter; indulgence, Lord of Misrule.... And it was his fault. She was a child and—she had great possessions; so Life and Love had become two excellent games, effortless, fruitful. Indubitably it was his fault. He should have pointed the child, steadied her, used his experience. His failure was inexcusable, because he had been through the mill, seen that Life, at any rate, was no game—a stroll or a struggle, perhaps, according as Fate laid down, but not a game. The pity was they might have strolled so pleasantly....