“Because it’s one of those cases of a man of really good intentions, merely gone wrong.  He was a horse-car driver, who got inflammatory rheumatism by the exposure, and was discharged.  He suffered fearful pain, and saw his family suffer for bread.  He grew bitter, and took up with these wild theories, not having enough original brain force, or education, to see their folly.  He believed firmly in them.  So firmly, that when I tried to reason him out of them many years ago he came to despise me and ordered me out of his rooms.  I had once done him a service, and felt angered at what I thought ungrateful conduct, so I made no attempt to keep up the friendliness.  He knew yesterday that dynamite was in the hands of some of those men, and tried to warn me away.  When I refused to go, he threw himself upon me, to protect me from the explosion.  Nothing else saved my life.”

“Peter, will your regiment have to do anything more?”

“I don’t think so.  The dynamite has caused a reaction, and has driven off the soberer part of the mob.  The pendulum, when it swings too far, always swings correspondingly far the other way.  I must stay here for a couple of days, but then if I’m asked, I’ll go back to Newport.”

“Papa and mamma want you, I’m sure,” said Leonore, glancing at the door again, after an entire forgetfulness.

“Then I shall go,” said Peter, though longing to say something else.

Leonore looked at him and said in the frankest way; “And I want you too.”  That was the way she paid Peter for his forbearance.

Then they all went up on the roof, where in one corner there were pots of flowers about a little table, over which was spread an awning.  Over that table, too, Jenifer had spread himself.  How good that breakfast was!  What a glorious September day it was!  How beautiful the view of the city and the bay was!  It was all so thoroughly satisfactory, that the three nearly missed the “limited.”  Of course Peter went to the station with them, and, short as was the time, he succeeded in obtaining for one of the party, “all the comic papers,” “the latest novel,” a small basket of fruit, and a bunch of flowers, not one of which, with the exception of the latter, the real object of these attentions wanted in the least.

Just here it is of value to record an interesting scientific discovery of Leonore’s, because women so rarely have made them.  It was, that the distance from New York to Newport is very much less than the distance from Newport to New York.

Curiously enough, two days later, his journey seemed to Peter the longest railroad ride he had ever taken.  “His friend” did not meet him this time.  His friend felt that her trip to New York must be offset before she could resume her proper self-respect.  “He was very nice,” she had said, in monologue, “about putting the trip down to friendship.  And he was very nice that morning in his study.  But I think his very niceness is suspicious, and so I must be hard on him!” A woman’s reasoning is apt to seem defective, yet sometimes it solves problems not otherwise answerable.