He was forty-four, Helena Pitstone's guardian, and clearly relegated already by that unmanageable child to the ranks of the middle-aged.

He had read her thought in her great scornful eyes.

"What has your generation to do with mine?
Your day is over!" And all the while the ugly truth was that he had never had his "day"-- and was likely now to miss it for good.

Or at least such "day" as had shone upon him had been so short, so chequered, so tragically wiped out, it might as well never have dawned.

Yet the one dear woman friend to whom in these latter years he had spoken freely, who knew him through and through--Helena Pitstone's mother--had taken for granted, in her quiet ascetic way, that he had indeed had his chance, and must accept for good and all what had come of it.