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 fifteen hundred a year, and you know one can't live on that—I mean not live. The second circumstance was public opinion, of which there's an awful lot nowadays. It regarded me as another young man going wrong, an impractical youth full of notions that would lead but to the grave, via temptation and radicalism and starvation, unless he were given a good hard job. Public opinion couldn't see the Paris idea. Neither could Rhoda, and that brings me to the third circumstance—no Circumstance.

"No human being could have behaved more humanly than good old Rhoda, when the bottom dropped out. Geoffrey, when I think of all the mean little things I've done and thought, and that I still have a Rhoda, I could almost weep—in fact I have. She gave up all her engagements in town and came home, not to be officious, but just to be there and do the thankless, nameless trifles that wouldn't have been done if she hadn't done them, to place screens wherever there might possibly be a draft. You knew my mother, and you know what it's like when there isn't anybody like that any more, suddenly, and perhaps you can imagine how comforting it is to have a Rhoda hovering in the background, and not asking questions! And preventing Mrs. Daggett from asking them, not to mention Mrs. Sipe and the others. I'll never forget how Rhoda held the motherly neighbors at bay. She didn't even invite me to live at her house; she just damn well moved me over, then left me to myself.