But the more he recalled
the more certain he grew that he was right. Life had never been like this:
the world had never come smashing into his house, his very family, with its
dirty teeming tenements, its schools, its prisons, electric chairs, its
feverish rush for money, its luxuries, its scandals. These things had
existed in the world, but remote and never real, mere things which he had
read about. War? Did he not remember wars that had come and gone in Europe?
But they hadn't come into his home like this, first making him poor when he
needed money for Edith and her children, then plunging Deborah into a
struggle which might very probably ruin her life, and now taking Laura and
filling her mind with thoughts of pagan living. Why was every man, woman
and child, these days, bound up in the whole life of the world? What would
come of it all? A new day out of this deafening night? Maybe so. But for
him it would come too late.
"What have I left to live for?"
One night with a sigh he went to his desk, lit a cigar and laid his hand
upon a pile of letters which had been mounting steadily. It was made up of
Laura's bills, the ones she had not remembered. Send them after her to Rome
for that Italian fellow to pay? No, it could not be thought of. Roger
turned to his dwindling bank account. He was not yet making money, he was
still losing a little each week. But he would not cut expenses. To the few
who were left in his employ, to be turned away would mean dire need.
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