“Basil!  You don’t mean it!  Why, take it!  Take it instantly!  Oh, what a thing to happen!  Oh, what luck!  But you deserve it, if you first suggested it.  What an escape, what a triumph over all those hateful insurance people!  Oh, Basil, I’m afraid he’ll change his mind!  You ought to have accepted on the spot.  You might have known I would approve, and you could so easily have taken it back if I didn’t.  Telegraph him now!  Run right out with the despatch—­Or we can send Tom!”

In these imperatives of Mrs. March’s there was always much of the conditional.  She meant that he should do what she said, if it were entirely right; and she never meant to be considered as having urged him.

“And suppose his enterprise went wrong?” her husband suggested.

“It won’t go wrong.  Hasn’t he made a success of his syndicate?”

“He says so—­yes.”

“Very well, then, it stands to reason that he’ll succeed in this, too.  He wouldn’t undertake it if he didn’t know it would succeed; he must have capital.”

“It will take a great deal to get such a thing going; and even if he’s got an Angel behind him—­”

She caught at the word—­“An Angel?”

“It’s what the theatrical people call a financial backer.  He dropped a hint of something of that kind.”

“Of course, he’s got an Angel,” said his wife, promptly adopting the word.  “And even if he hadn’t, still, Basil, I should be willing to have you risk it.  The risk isn’t so great, is it?  We shouldn’t be ruined if it failed altogether.  With our stocks we have two thousand a year, anyway, and we could pinch through on that till you got into some other business afterward, especially if we’d saved something out of your salary while it lasted.  Basil, I want you to try it!  I know it will give you a new lease of life to have a congenial occupation.”  March laughed, but his wife persisted.  “I’m all for your trying it, Basil; indeed I am.  If it’s an experiment, you can give it up.”

“It can give me up, too.”

“Oh, nonsense!  I guess there’s not much fear of that.  Now, I want you to telegraph Mr. Fulkerson, so that he’ll find the despatch waiting for him when he gets to New York.  I’ll take the whole responsibility, Basil, and I’ll risk all the consequences.”

III.

March’s face had sobered more and more as she followed one hopeful burst with another, and now it expressed a positive pain.  But he forced a smile and said:  “There’s a little condition attached.  Where did you suppose it was to be published?”

“Why, in Boston, of course.  Where else should it be published?”

She looked at him for the intention of his question so searchingly that he quite gave up the attempt to be gay about it.  “No,” he said, gravely, “it’s to be published in New York.”

She fell back in her chair.  “In New York?” She leaned forward over the table toward him, as if to make sure that she heard aright, and said, with all the keen reproach that he could have expected:  “In New York, Basil!  Oh, how could you have let me go on?”