I thought," said the boy. "And what's the use of our
ever fighting about anything in America? I always thought we could vote
anything we wanted."

"We can, if we're honest, and don't buy and sell one another's votes,"
said his father. "And men like Lindau, who renounce the American means as
hopeless, and let their love of justice hurry them into sympathy with
violence--yes, they are wrong; and poor Lindau did die in a bad cause, as
you say, Tom."

"I think Conrad had no business there, or you, either, Basil," said his
wife.

"Oh, I don't defend myself," said March. "I was there in the cause of
literary curiosity and of conjugal disobedience. But Conrad--yes, he had
some business there: it was his business to suffer there for the sins of
others. Isabel, we can't throw aside that old doctrine of the Atonement
yet. The life of Christ, it wasn't only in healing the sick and going
about to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's as
great a mystery as the mystery of death. Why should there be such a
principle in the world? But it's been felt, and more or less dumbly,
blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we
even wish to suffer for them. That's what has created the religious
orders in all times--the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to our
day as much as to the mediaeval past. That's what is driving a girl like
Margaret Vance, who has everything that the world can offer her young
beauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the
dying."

"Yes, yes!" cried Mrs. March. "How--how did she look there, Basil?" She
had her feminine misgivings; she was not sure but the girl was something
of a poseuse, and enjoyed the picturesqueness, as well as the pain; and
she wished to be convinced that it was not so.

"Well," she said, when March had told again the little there was to tell,
"I suppose it must be a great trial to a woman like Mrs. Horn to have her
niece going that way."

"The way of Christ?" asked March, with a smile.

"Oh, Christ came into the world to teach us how to live rightly in it,
too. If we were all to spend our time in hospitals, it would be rather
dismal for the homes. But perhaps you don't think the homes are worth
minding?" she suggested, with a certain note in her voice that he knew.

He got up and kissed her. "I think the gimcrackeries are." He took the
hat he had set down on the parlor table on coming in, and started to put
it in t