"
"Let me manage it for you." Stokely rose to go. Howard began thanking him,
but he cut him off with:
"You owe me no thanks. You've made money for me--big money. I owe you my
help. Besides, I don't want any outsider in here. Let me know when you're
ready." He nodded and was gone.
"What a chance!" Howard repeated again and again.
He was looking out over New York.
Twenty years before he had faced it, asking of it nothing but a living and
his freedom. For twenty years he had fought. Year by year, even when he
seemed to be standing still or going backward, he had steadily gained,
making each step won a vantage-ground for forward attack. And now--victory.
Power, wealth, fame, all his!
Yet a deep melancholy came over him. And he fell to despising himself for
the kind of exultation that filled him, its selfishness, its sordidness,
the absence of all high enthusiasm. Why was he denied the happiness of
self-deception? Why could he not forget the means, blot it out, now that
the end was attained?
His mind went out, not to Marian, but to that other--the one sleeping under
the many, many layers of autumn leaves at Asheville. And he heard a voice
saying so faintly, so timidly: "I lay awake night after night listening to
your breathing, and whispering under my breath, 'I love you, I love you.
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