Of his own sorrow he spoke little--hardly realised the depth of it till he caught himself asking the calendar on his writing-desk, "What's the use of going on ?" There had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head that, some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy had left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into his possessions.

Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there would follow splendid years of great works carried out together--the old head backing the young fire.

Now his boy was dead--lost at sea, as it might have been a Swede sailor from one of Cheyne's big tea-ships; the wife was dying, or worse; he himself was trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no heart to meet his many enemies.
He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne, in a verandah-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day.

There was a war of rates among four Western railroads in which he was supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had developed in his lumber-camps in Oregon, and the legislature of the State of California, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open war against him.
Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign.

But now he sat limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big body shrunk inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the Chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary's questions as he opened the Saturday mail.
Cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and pull out.