Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/299

 Martha to set a definite date for the wedding before her father's departure for Berlin.

With the setting of the date the relations of the three took on another aspect—like a change of lighting at the theater. Everything was as it had been, and yet everything was different. Professor Wentworth considered himself already eliminated by the younger generation, and although they invited him to share the new home on his return from the year in Germany, he assured them that he would under no conditions cumber up the background in any such fashion, and began to make plans for joining forces with another widowed professor whose children were now all married. His resigned, philosophic acceptance of his soon-to-be exit from their stage set them further from him and closer to each other, as if he had already stepped out from their lives and closed the door behind him. They occasionally felt a little self-conscious awareness of being alone with each other which was new to them. As Martha quaintly phrased it, she now began to feel not only that she was engaged but that she was going to be married. The feeling was a new one, gave a new color to her thoughts and sometimes made her feel a little queer.

Neale told her that he understood this and felt with her that he was stepping forward into a new phase of their relation; and he did feel this at intervals. But while this was the only change that had occurred in Martha's life, it was overshadowed in Neale's by his intuition that he had now come to a crucial moment in his business career. He recognized perfectly the feel of the moment in the game when one side or the other wins, although half the time may yet remain to be played through. In football it lasted but an instant, that well-remembered poise on the very crest of the will-to-win. In business it would last—he had no idea how long—but he felt that he had been well coached by life, that his training had left him with the endurance to-stick it out—years if necessary. His pride as a fighter hardened and set. He felt again the single-hearted passion to win out at any cost to himself or others which had been the meat and marrow of his football days. In short he began to be considered by all the