"I shall have to think it over."

"Well, but I understood you were anxious to sell!" said the agent, anxiously following him toward the door and seeing his fat commission vanishing into dim uncertainty.

"Yes, I was," said Keith Morrell thoughtfully. "But something has--come up--" He hesitated for the right word and ended lamely, "I shall have to think it over."

"You mean the price is not enough?" asked the agent eagerly. "I'm quite sure the man would pay more if he had to."

"No, it is not a matter of money," said the young man, more as if he were arguing with himself.

"You mean you are considering coming back to live there?"

The agent's mouth drooped with anticipated disappointment.

"No, I hadn't thought of that, exactly."

"Well, you mean you might withdraw the house from the market?"

"I don't know really what I mean," said Keith. "I shall have to think it over. Perhaps I shall have to go over the house again."

And suddenly it came to him that that was just what he must do. He would have to go over the house and find it bleak and empty, in order to wipe out that vision of the little boy praying at his mother's knee beside the fire, before he could ever hand over that house to be metamorphosed and obliterated from life and history.

The agent followed him almost out to the car, talking eagerly, suggesting the buyer might take another place instead if he kept him waiting, persuading him that it was a great offer, cash, in these hard times. But Keith only looked down gravely at the path as he walked and reiterated pleasantly, "I will give you my answer day after tomorrow. Possibly I will telephone you from New York."

He had not really been listening to what the agent said. He had been wondering why he was suddenly so unsettled about selling the house.

The agent watched the car drive away with a disappointed sag to his shoulders. He had been planning what he would do with that nice fat commission that had seemed so surely coming his way. And Evelyn Avery gushed noisily in her triumph as she drove her quarry home, openly exulting in her success. But Keith Morrell was silent, almost absent-minded, suffering her conversation but giving little heed to the news she was pouring forth. He was still wondering why he was so undecided. What would he do with the house, supposing he should keep it? He had no intention of coming back alone to live in it, even supposing he could arrange his business connections to make that possible. And certainly Anne Casper, provided the breach in their friendship should be healed, would never be willing to live there. She would call it an old-fashioned barracks, perhaps, or maybe even a dump. It seemed ridiculous to allow himself even for an instant to think of such a thing as keeping the house. It would only fall into ruin if it were left standing idle, an expense for caretakers and taxes. Why couldn't he make up his mind to sell it and have it over with at once?

Yet somehow it seemed as if the spirit of his mother were softly protesting. The idea of making the lovely old rooms into apartments was abhorrent to him, and the influx of people that the building of cheap houses would surely bring, a disrespect to the lovely old estate where his childhood had been spent.

On the other hand, equally unpleasant was the thought of a tenant, that is, some tenants, going about familiarly in his mother's home! It was unthinkable! Almost he would rather see it torn down than that! A fool he was, of course, and probably only very tired from the heat of the day. Perhaps tomorrow would bring clearer thoughts and a firmer determination. It had been a mistake to come down amid the old association again. It had upset him, brought back his sorrow and loss. Better to have stayed in New York and had it out with Anne Casper. After all, she belonged to the modern age, and he had to live his life in the present, not the past. He must shake off this strange sentimentality that had him in its grasp. It must be that girl, Daphne, who had reminded him so much of his mother! The girl, and her talk of other days!

He was almost glad to get out of the car and enter the ornate Avery mansion, with its air of sophistication, its ostentatious luxury, and rouse to the immediate present.

Back he was at once in the world he was learning to know as his life now--cocktails and free, careless conversation, daring attire and startling makeup.

They welcomed him noisily, the guests who had already arrived; they claimed an intimacy he had never felt with any of them and plied him with jokes that were not to his taste. He had been out in the modern world for several years, both at home and abroad, and had grown quite used to its life, quite a part of it at times, but somehow he had not expected to find it here in his old hometown. Suddenly it seemed an impertinence here so near to the old home. It almost seemed as if he were seeing it with his mother's disapproving eyes.

He stood a little apart from the rest, holding a glass from which he had not tasted, which somehow he was strangely reluctant to taste.