The people forgot old Templeton, and they also became a bit hazy about the cardinal principle of the Foundation, much as they forget other disasters, but they did not forget to look upon Braden Thorpe as a menace to mankind.
And so it was that after two months of waiting, he closed his office for the summer and disappeared from the city. He had not treated a solitary patient, nor had he been called in consultation by a single surgeon of his acquaintance, although many of them professed friendship for and confidence in him.
Six weeks later Simmy Dodge located his friend in a small coast town in Maine, practically out of the reach of tourists and not at all accessible to motorists. He had taken board and lodging with a needy villager who was still honest, and there he sat and brooded over the curse that his own intelligence had laid upon him. He had been there for a month or more before he lifted his head, figuratively speaking, to look at the world again,--and he found it still bright and sparkling despite his desire to have it otherwise in order that he might be recompensed for his mood. Then it was that he wrote to Simmy Dodge, asking him to sell the furnishings and appliances in his office, sublet the rooms, and send to him as soon as possible the proceeds of the sale. He confessed frankly and in his straightforward way that he was hard up and needed the money!
Now, it should be remembered that Braden Thorpe had very little means of his own, a small income from his mother's estate being all that he possessed. He had been dependent upon his grandfather up to the day he died. Years had been spent in preparing him for the personal achievements that were to make him famous and rich by his own hand. Splendid ability and unquestioned earning power were the result of Templeton Thorpe's faith in the last of his race. But nothing was to come of it. His ability remained but his earning power was gone. He was like a splendid engine from which the motive power has been shut off.
For weeks after leaving New York he had seen the world blackly through eyes that grasped no perspective. But he was young, he was made of the flesh that fights, and the spirit that will not down. He looked up from the black view that had held his attention so long, and smiled. It was not a gay smile but one in which there was defiant humour. After all, why shouldn't he smile? These villagers smiled cheerfully, and what had they in their narrow lives to cause them to see the world brightly? He was no worse off than they. If they could be content to live outside the world, why shouldn't he be as they? He was big and strong and young. The fellows who went out to sea in the fishing boats were no stronger, no better than he. He could do the things that they were doing, and they sang while they went to and from their work.