* * * * *

In the evening, at home in his study, Roger heard a slight knock at the door.  He looked up and saw John.

“May I come in, Mr. Gale, for a minute?”

“Yes, my boy.”  John hobbled in.

“Only a minute.”  His voice was embarrassed.  “Just two or three things I thought of,” he said.  “The first was about your son-in-law.  You see, I was his stenographer—­and while I was in his office—­this morning helping Doctor Baird—­I found a good deal I can do there still—­about things no one remembers but me.  So I’ll stay there awhile, if it’s all right.  Only—­” he paused—­“without any pay.  See what I mean?”

“Yes, I see,” said Roger.  “And you’d better stay—­in that way if you like.”

“Thanks,” said John.  “Then about his wife and family.  You’re to take them up to the mountains, I hear—­and—­well, before this happened you asked me up this summer.  But I guess I’d better not.”

“I don’t think you’d be in the way, my boy.”

“I’d rather stay here, if you don’t mind.  When I’m through in your son-in-law’s office I thought I might go back to yours.  I could send you your mail every two or three days.”

“I’d like that, John—­it will be a great help.”

“All right, Mr. Gale.”  John stopped at the door.  “And Miss Deborah,” he ventured.  “Is she to get married just the same?”

“Oh, yes, I think so—­later on.”

“Good-night, sir.”

And John went out of the room.

When would Deborah be married?  It came over Roger, when he was alone, how his family had shifted its center.  Deborah would have come here to live, to love and be happy, a mother perhaps, but now she must find a home of her own.  In her place would come Edith with her children.  All would center on her in her grief.

And for no cause!  Just a trick of chance, a street accident!  And Roger grew bitter and rebelled.  Bruce was not the one of the family to die.  Bruce, so shrewd and vigorous, so vital, the practical man of affairs.  Bruce had been going the pace that kills—­yes, Roger had often thought of it.  But that had nothing to do with this!  If Bruce had died at fifty, say, as a result of the life he had chosen, the fierce exhausting city which he had loved as a man will love drink, then at least there would have been some sense of fairness in it all!  If the town had let him alone till his time!  But to be knocked down by an automobile!  The devilish irony of it!  No reason—­nothing!  Just hideous luck!

Well, life was like that.  As for Edith and her children, he would be glad to have them here.  Only, it would be different, the house would have to change again.  He was sorry, too, for Deborah.  No wedding trip as she had planned, no home awaiting her return.

So his mind went over his family.

But suddenly such thoughts fell away as trivial and of small account.  For these people would still be alive.  And Bruce was dead, and Roger was old.  So he thought about Bruce and about himself, and all his children grew remote.  “You will live on in our children’s lives.”  Was there no other immortality?  The clock ticked on the mantle and beside it “The Thinker” brooded down.  And Roger looked up unafraid, but grim and gravely wondering.