I spend my whole day putting on different kinds
of clothes. I've a position to keep up now, Mr. Winfield."
Kirk lit a fresh cigar and sat thinking. The old feeling of desolation
which had attacked him as he came up the bay had returned. He felt like
a stranger in a strange world. Life was not the same. Ruth was not the
same. Nothing was the same.
The more he contemplated the new regulations affecting Bill the
chillier and more unfriendly did they seem to him. He could not bring
himself to realize Ruth as one of the great army of cranks preaching
and carrying out the gospel of Lora Delane Porter. It seemed so at
variance with her character as he had known it. He could not seriously
bring himself to believe that she genuinely approved of these absurd
restrictions. Yet, apparently she did.
He looked into the future. It had a grey and bleak aspect. He seemed to
himself like a man gazing down an unknown path full of unknown perils.
Chapter III
The Misadventure of Steve
Kirk was not the only person whom the sudden change in the financial
position of the Winfield family had hit hard. The blighting effects of
sudden wealth had touched Steve while Kirk was still in Colombia.
In a sense, it had wrecked Steve's world. Nobody had told him to stop
or even diminish the number of his visits, but the fact remained that,
by the time Kirk returned to New York, he had practically ceased to go
to the house on Fifth Avenue.
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