He was the strong man who knew his own mind and could not be
shaken.
Yet, on the afternoon of the day following Mrs. Lora Delane Porter's
entry into his life, Kirk sat in the studio, feeling, for the first
time in recent years, a vague discontent. He was uneasy, almost afraid.
The slight dislocation in the smooth-working machinery of his
existence, caused by the compulsory retirement of George Pennicut, had
made him thoroughly uncomfortable. With discomfort had come
introspection, and with introspection this uneasiness that was almost
fear.
A man, living alone, without money troubles to worry him, sinks
inevitably into a routine. Fatted ease is good for no one. It sucks the
soul out of a man. Kirk, as he sat smoking in the cool dusk of the
studio, was wondering, almost in a panic, whether all was well with
himself.
This mild domestic calamity had upset him so infernally. It could not
be right that so slight a change in his habits should have such an
effect upon him. George had been so little hurt--the doctor gave him a
couple of days before complete recovery--that it had not seemed worth
while to Kirk to engage a substitute. It was simpler to go out for his
meals and make his own bed. And it was the realization that this
alteration in his habits had horribly disturbed and unsettled him that
was making Kirk subject himself now to an examination of quite unusual
severity.
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