street, there was "something in him." There was no possibility of
viewing either him or his actions with indifference; of merging him in,
and numbering him with, the crowd.

There are men whose lives are intaglios, cut by the chisel of destiny
deep into the sard of their generations; every line and curve and
faintest tracing pregnant with interest, suggestion, and emotion. Men
who are loved and hated, feared, adored and loathed with an intensity
that their commonplace fellows are incapable of evoking. They are
loadstones which attract events; whirlpools which draw to themselves
excitement, emotion, and vast store of sympathy.

Some years previous to the opening of this story, Nesbit Thorne, then a
brilliant recent graduate of Harvard, a leader in society, and a man of
whom great things were predicted, whose name was in many mouths as that
of a man likely to achieve distinction in any path of life he should
select, made a hasty, ill-advised marriage with a Miss Ethel Ross, a
New York belle of surpassing beauty and acumen. A woman whose sole
thought was pleasure, whose highest conception of the good of life was
a constantly varied menu of social excitement, and whose noblest
reading of the word duty was compassed in having a well ordered house,
sumptuous entertainments, and irreproachable toilets. A wife to
satisfy any man who was unemotional, unexacting, and prepared to give
way to her in all things.

Nesbit Thorne, unfortunately, was none of these things, and so his
married life had come to grief. The first few months were smoothed and
gilded by his passionate enjoyment of her mere physical perfection, his
pleasure in the admiration she excited, and in the envy of other men.
Life's river glided smoothly, gayly in the sunshine; then ugly snags