He saw, here also, the rows of books lining the study wall, the always-­littered desk which no one was allowed to touch, the couch where he slept alone. He should be a happy man: only yesterday he had received official appointment to the Committee on Administration as faculty adviser to the students beginning next semester and Scribners had enthusiastically accepted The Tragic Ideal for November publication. Following on the heels of his having been raised to a full professorship, these things meant substantial recognition of all he had been working for, all he had been giving of himself, the past sixteen years. He had wired the news to Ethel last evening, and was eager to hear what she had to say about it when he would meet her this afternoon on the Cape. As if his wife and two sons weren’t enough, now more than ever he had everything to live for; yet the satisfaction was nothing in view of the inexplicable anxiety which accompanied his nights and days. His happiness, his success, his marriage itself, seemed founded on sand. What man’s wasn’t? But in his case he was sometimes tensely aware of some unnameable force which momentarily menaced the whole structure of his planned life. He gazed about the dark study where the work had been produced (at what cost in concentration his wife would never know) which might or might not do something for him in the scholastic world. Though this had been their home for many years and he would shortly be returning to it again—willingly enough, doubtless, when their holiday was over—he was glad to be leaving the place. In some vague way he connected his unrest with the apartment, particularly with the study, and his confinement and isolation there. It was due to an unhealthy preoccupation with self, a denial of the life around him. The burden would lift when he got away; what he needed was a vacation with Ethel, the island and the open air, walking, swimming, the sea and the sun. As he slammed the door and locked up, he heard the heavy tongs fall inside with a loud clang—against the hearth fender, probably. He started toward the elevator, then changed his mind. He unlocked the door and came back in.

He picked up the tongs and replaced them against the side of the hearth, leaning them against the black marble slab that supported the mantel. Once more he looked restlessly about. Standing in the nearly dark familiar room, he puzzled over his nameless apprehension.