a hand of hers between two of his; pressed it
hard, released it.

He was speaking in a voice that seemed vaguely unlike his own.

"It's hard for you--for your father--for all of us down here. His life
was needed ... wonderfully, for such a boy. And yet.... How could a man
wish it better with himself? He wouldn't, that I'm sure of.... Gave away
his life every day, and at the end flung it all out at once, to save a
factory negro. Don't you know that if he'd lived a thousand years, he
could never have put one touch to that?"

Cally said unsteadily: "I know that's true...."

She wished to go on; but the Director was speaking again, hurriedly:

"And you mustn't think that a blow on the head can bring it all to an
end. If I know anything, his story will be often told. People that you
and I will never know, will know of this, and it will help them--when
their pinch comes. There's no measuring the value of a great example.
When it strikes, you can feel the whole line lift...."

And then he added, in a let-down sort of way: "Freest man I ever saw."

There was no reply to make to these things. They went down the stairs
together. Halfway down, the man spoke again:

"In the little while I've been here, I've seen and heard a great deal.
Some day you must let me tell you--how much there is down here to keep
his memory green."

The stairs were long. A kind of terror was growing within her. She would
go to pieces before she reached the bottom. But that peril passed; and
very near now was the waiting car, and merciful shelter....

They crossed, amid springing memories, the old court where, one rainy
afternoon, there had happened what had turned her life thenceforward.
Then they were safely through the door, and came out upon the portico,
into the last light of the dying afternoon. And here, above all else
that she felt, she encountered a dim surprise.

When she had passed this way a little while before, it was as if all
power of feeling had been frozen in her. Sights and sounds were not for
her. So now the sudden spectacle that met her eyes came as a large vague
confusion.

The shabby street was black with people.

Her affliction had been so supremely personal, her sense of this man's
tragic solitariness in the world so overwhelming, that she could not at
once take in the meaning of what she saw. She must have faltered to a
pause. And she heard Pond's voice, so strangely gentle:

"You see he was much loved here."

Her