re that man's Guilt, if I gept hiss mawney. If you hat toldt me at the
peginning--if you hat peen frank with meboat it iss all righdt; you can
go on; you ton't see dese tings as I see them; and you haf cot a family,
and I am a free man. I voark to myself, and when I ton't voark, I sdarfe
to myself. But I geep my handts glean, voark or sdarfe. Gif him hiss
mawney pack! I am sawry for him; I would not hoart hiss feelings, boat I
could not pear to douch him, and hiss mawney iss like boison!"

March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him the folly, the injustice,
the absurdity of his course; it ended in their both getting angry, and in
Lindau's going away in a whirl of German that included Basil in the guilt
of the man whom Lindau called his master.

"Well," said Mrs. March. "He is a crank, and I think you're well rid of
him. Now you have no quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you can
keep right on."

"Yes," said March, "I wish it didn't make me feel so sneaking. What a
long day it's been! It seems like a century since I got up."

"Yes, a thousand years. Is there anything else left to happen?"

"I hope not. I'd like to go to bed."

"Why, aren't you going to the theatre?" wailed Bella, coming in upon her
father's desperate expression.

"The theatre? Oh yes, certainly! I meant after we got home," and March
amused himself at the puzzled countenance of the child. "Come on! Is Tom
ready?"

IX.

Fulkerson parted with the Marches in such trouble of mind that he did not
feel able to meet that night the people whom he usually kept so gay at
Mrs. Leighton's table. He went to Maroni's for his dinner, for this
reason and for others more obscure. He could not expect to do anything
more with Dryfoos at once; he knew that Dryfoos must feel that he had
already made an extreme concession to March, and he believed that if he
was to get anything more from him it must be after Dryfoos had dined. But
he was not without the hope, vague and indefinite as it might be, that he
should find Lindau at Maroni's, and perhaps should get some concession
from him, some word of regret or apology which he could report to
Dryfoos, and at lest make the means of reopening the affair with him;
perhaps Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, would back down
altogether, and for March's sake would withdraw from all connection with
'Every Other Week' himself, and so leave everything serene. Fulkerson
felt capable, in his desperation, of delic