Edith came to him several times, and there was something in her face which gave him sharp forebodings.  Making a great effort he tried to talk to her clearly.

“It’s hard to keep up with your children,” he said.  “It means keeping up with everything new.  And you stay in your rut and then it’s too late.  Before you know it you are old.”

But his words subsided in mutterings, and Roger wearily closed his eyes.  For a glance up into Edith’s face had shown him only pity there and no heed to his warning.  He saw that she looked upon him as old and still upon herself as young, though he noticed the threads of gray in her hair....  Then he realized she had gone and that his chamber had grown dark.  He must have been dreaming.  Of what, he asked.  He tried to remember.  And suddenly out of the darkness, so harsh and clear it startled him, a picture rose in Roger’s mind of a stark lonely figure, a woman in a graveyard cutting the grass on family graves.  Where had he seen it?  He could not recall.  What had it to do with Edith?  Was she not living in New York?...  What had so startled him just now?  Some thought, some vivid picture, some nightmare he could not recall.

His last talks were with Deborah.  All through those days and the long nights, too, he kept fancying she was in the room, and it brought deep balm to his restless soul.  He asked her to tell him about the schools, and Deborah talked to him quietly.  She was going back to her work in the fall.  She felt very humble about it—­she told him she felt older now and she saw that her work was barely begun.  But she was even happier than before.  Her hand lay in his, and it tightened there.  He opened his eyes and looked up into hers.

“All so strange,” he muttered, “life.”  There was a sharp contracting of her wide and sensitive mouth.

“Yes, dear, strange!” she whispered.

“But I’m so glad you’re going on.”  He frowned as he tried to be simple and clear, and make her feel he understood what she had set herself to do.  “All people,” he said slowly, “never counted so much as now.  And never so hungry—­all—­as now—­for all of life—­like children—­children who should go to school.  Your work will grow—­I can see ahead.  Never a time when every man and woman and child could grow so much—­and hand it on—­and hand it on—­as you will do to your small son.”

He felt her hand on his forehead, and for some moments nothing was said.  Vaguely in glimpses Roger saw his small grandson growing up; and he pictured other children here, not her own but of her greater family, as the two merged into one.  He felt that she would not grow old.  Children, lives of children; work, dreams and aspirations.  How bright it seemed as he stared ahead.  Then he heard the cry of her baby.

“Shall I nurse him here?” he heard her ask.  He pressed her hand in answer.  And when again he opened his eyes she was by his side with the child at her breast.  Its large round eyes, so pure and clear, gazed into his own for a long, long time.