The blow fell upon the Lindsays with the more crushing force from its terrible suddenness.  Among all the contingencies to which they had looked forward they had never seriously considered the possibility of this.  They had prepared themselves for disappointment, but not for bereavement.  For the first time they realized how thoroughly their adopted child had become a part of their life.  Hours that had been the brightest in the day now dragged along wearisomely, and they often sat in silence together, because they knew that if they spoke at all It must be of Little John.  After a time they saw, as many young parents have seen after their first great loss, that the world could never be quite the old world to them again.  But they felt their love for each other to be all the stronger, and they tried hard to lighten each other’s sorrow by being cheerful and brave.  It was saddest, of course, for Ellen.  All day she was alone in the house, and, though she might busy her hands over a watercolor or an etching, her thoughts would often stray away and send the tears to her eyes.  Occasionally she yielded to impulse and paid furtive visits to the nursery, where, with a little dress or some other memento of her lost child laid upon her knees, she would sit in long revery.  By and by Edward noticed that her face had taken upon itself a constant expression of sadness, which even her smiles could not disguise.  He began to think about a European tour.  From girlhood Ellen had looked forward to spending a year in study abroad, and it seemed to him that no time could be better than the present.  It would be hard to leave his business; he could not do so before spring anyway; but everything should be sacrificed to Ellen’s happiness, and, with her assent, he resolved, they should go at that season.  Just now his business was unusually exacting.  He became every day more alive to the fact that, unless he chose to lose a valuable portion of his client?, he must spend a few weeks in the Southwest.  Many St. Louis capitalists were anxious to buy land in Texas at this unparalleled period of her prosperity, and many commissions as well as opportunities for private investment in the State demanded his attention at once.  But could he and ought he to leave Ellen now?  He could not decide.  When he was at home he refused to consider the question at all; but at his office it constantly forced itself upon his attention.  Finally, after a great deal of exasperatingly unsatisfactory correspondence with agents in Austin and Galveston, he went to Ellen.

“I will give the whole thing up, if you say so,” he declared.

“But you think it very necessary for you to go?” she asked.

“From a business point of view, absolutely necessary.  It is a question of improving or failing to improve a chance to make a good many thousand dollars.  There is no middle course:  I can’t send anybody who could do the business for me.  Still, if you are as unwilling to have me go as I am to leave you, I shall stay at home.”