undivided in his attention to business as was customary with him. Many times his mind wandered to the face that was like, and so unlike, the face of his old college mate. It was aged. It was lined. It was tired.
"But you could trust it," Christy concluded, "to the uttermost."
"Jim Perry," he said, facing at last the crucial idea which he had sought to evade, "has got much out of life. What am I getting?"
The roar of the city came in at the open windows. Christy did not hear.
"If I should die to-night—that is too trite a supposition. If I should have softening of the brain to-night, or advancing paralysis, what satisfaction would there be to which I could hold fast, as I sat with my face to the wall while life passed me by?"
The breeze fluttered the papers on his desk.
"If my plans stopped now, nothing would be left from the failure. They need the future in order to amount to anything. If Jim Perry never gets back to China, why"—he leaned his head on his hand and thought came slowly—"he has lived for an object and attained it as he went along."
Christy was still thinking of the look in Jim's eyes and the sound of his voice when footfalls along the corridor foretold an interruption.
Several men followed on the heels of one another. When they were all gone, Christy's mind had largely recovered its ordinary temper.
"Jim Perry is an awfully decent chap; it was upsetting to see him looking so done. If he had stayed
4
