She was going to live in Rome. Try to stop her? No.
What good would it do? Wings of the Eagles, Rome reborn. That was it, she
had hit it, struck the keynote of this new age. Rome reborn, all clean,
old-fashioned Christian living swept away by millions of men at each
others' throats like so many wolves. And at last quite openly to himself
Roger admitted that he felt old. Old and beaten, out of date. Moments
passed, and hours--he took little note of time. Nor did he see on the
mantle the dark visage of "The Thinker" there, resting on the huge clinched
fist and brooding down upon him. Lower, imperceptibly, he sank into his
leather chair.
Quiet had returned to his house.
CHAPTER XXXIV
But the quiet was dark to Roger now. Each night he spent in his study
alone, for instinctively he felt the need of being by himself for a while,
of keeping away from his children--out of whose lives he divined that other
events would soon come forth to use up the last of the strength that was in
him.
And Roger grew angry with the world. Why couldn't it let a man alone, an
old man in a silent house alive for him with memories? Repeatedly in such
hours his mind would go groping backward into the years behind him. What a
long and winding road, half buried in the jungle, dim, almost impenetrable,
made up of millions of small events, small worries, plans and dazzling
dreams, with which his days had all been filled.
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