lips for argument,
then swiftly changed his intention. "Tell me about Judge Adams, dad," he
said, bungling over his desire to change the topic, "the fellow who knew
his Pericles."

"It's too long a story," James Thorold said. He watched Peter closely
in the fashion of an advocate studying the characteristics of a judge.
The boy's idealism, his vivid young patriotism, his eager championship
of those elements of the new America that his father contemned, had
fired his personality with a glaze that left James Thorold's smoothly
diplomatic fingers wandering over its surface, unable to hold it within
his grasp. He had a story to tell Peter--some time--a story of Judge
Adams, of the house among the lilacs, of days of war, of Abraham
Lincoln; but the time for its telling must wait upon circumstance that
would make Peter Thorold more ready to understand weakness and failure
than he now seemed. Consciously James Thorold took a change of venue
from Peter Thorold of the visions to Peter Thorold of the inevitable
disillusions. But to the former he made concession. "Shall we go to the
city hall now?" he asked as they rose from the table.

The city hall, a massive white granite pile covering half of the square
east of La Salle Street and north of Washington and meeting its twin
of the county building to form a solid mass of masonry, flaunted black
drapings over the doorways through which James Thorold and his son
entered. Through a wide corridor of bronze and marble they found their
way, passing a few stragglers from the great crowd that had filled the
lower floors of the huge structures when Isador Framberg's body had
been brought from its hearse and carried to the centre of the aisles,
the place where the intersecting thoroughfares met. Under a great bronze
lamp stood the catafalque, covered with the Stars and Stripes and
guarded by the men of the fleet.

Peter Thorold, pressing forward, took his place, his cap thrust under
his arm, at the foot of the bier, giving his tribute of silence to the
boy who had died for his country. But James Thorold went aside to stand
beside an elevator-shaft. Had his son watched him as he was watching
Peter, he would have seen the swift emotions that took their way across
his father's face. He would have seen the older man's look dilate with
the strained horror of one who gazed back through the dimming years to
see a ghost. He would have seen sorrow, and grief, and a great remorse
rising to James