The one thing he had really wanted all his life was to be free; and there was still something unconquered in him, something besides the strong work-horse that his profession had made of him.

He felt rich to-night in the possession of that unstultified survival; in the light of his experience, it was more precious than honors or achievement.

In all those busy, successful years there had been nothing so good as this hour of wild light-heartedness.

This feeling was the only happiness that was real to him, and such hours were the only ones in which he could feel his own continuous identity--feel the boy he had been in the rough days of the old West, feel the youth who had worked his way across the ocean on a cattle-ship and gone to study in Paris without a dollar in his pocket.

The man who sat in his offices in Boston was only a powerful machine.