Other men--
He made a calculation of how much time a practising lawyer saw his
wife: certainly he was out of the house before nine--Lee knew lawyers
who were in their offices at seven-thirty--and he was hardly back until
after five. Nine hours absent daily through the week; and it was
probable that he was in bed by eleven, up at seven--seven hours' sleep;
of the eight hours left in twenty-four half if not two-thirds of the
Sundays and some part of the others were devoted to a recreation; and
this took no account of the briefcases brought home, the thought and
contributary preoccupations.
More than that, his mind, his hopes and planning, were constantly
directed toward his legal concerns; the wife of such a man filled about
the position of his golf or billiards. Lee Randon had never analyzed
this before, and the result amazed him. With younger men, of course, it
was different; they had more time and interest for their homes, their
wives and children. Everything constantly shifted, changed, perished;
all, that was, but the unintelligible spurring need beyond any
accomplishment.
In him it was almost as though there were--or, perhaps, had been--two
distinct, opposed processes of thought, two different personalities, a
fact still admirably illustrated by his private interest in the doll,
in Cytherea. Much younger he had been fond of music, of opera and then
symphony concerts, and his university years had been devoted to a wide
indiscriminate reading: sitting until morning with college men of
poetic tendencies, he had discussed the intricacies of conduct in the
light of beauty rather than prudence.
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