interest at a time fills these. Fulkerson
was cheerful when they got into the street, almost gay; and Mrs. March
experienced a rebound from her depression which she felt that she ought
not to have experienced. But she condoned the offence a little in
herself, because her husband remained so constant in his gravity; and,
pending the final accounting he must make her for having been where he
could be of so much use from the first instant of the calamity, she was
tenderly, gratefully proud of all the use he had been to Conrad's family,
and especially his miserable old father. To her mind, March was the
principal actor in the whole affair, and much more important in having
seen it than those who had suffered in it. In fact, he had suffered
incomparably.

"Well, well," said Fulkerson. "They'll get along now. We've done all we
could, and there's nothing left but for them to bear it. Of course it's
awful, but I guess it 'll come out all right. I mean," he added, "they'll
pull through now."

"I suppose," said March, "that nothing is put on us that we can't bear.
But I should think," he went on, musingly, "that when God sees what we
poor finite creatures can bear, hemmed round with this eternal darkness
of death, He must respect us."

"Basil!" said his wife. But in her heart she drew nearer to him for the
words she thought she ought to rebuke him for.

"Oh, I know," he said, "we school ourselves to despise human nature. But
God did not make us despicable, and I say, whatever end He meant us for,
He must have some such thrill of joy in our adequacy to fate as a father
feels when his son shows himself a man. When I think what we can be if we
must, I can't believe the least of us shall finally perish."

"Oh, I reckon the Almighty won't scoop any of us," said Fulkerson, with a
piety of his own.

"That poor boy's father!" sighed Mrs. March. "I can't get his face out of
my sight. He looked so much worse than death."

"Oh, death doesn't look bad," said March. "It's life that looks so in its
presence. Death is peace and pardon. I only wish poor old Lindau was as
well out of it as Conrad there."

"Ah, Lindau! He has done harm enough," said Mrs. March. "I hope he will
be careful after this."

March did not try to defend Lindau against her theory of the case, which
inexorably held him responsible for Conrad's death.

"Lindau's going to come out all right, I guess," said Fulkerson. "He was
first-rate when I saw him at the hospit