“Why, Lindau,” March began, but the old man interrupted him.

“Ton’t dalk to me, Passil!  I could not haf believedt it of you.  When you know how I feel about dose tings, why tidn’t you dell me whose mawney you bay oudt to me?  Ach, I ton’t plame you—­I ton’t rebroach you.  You haf nefer thought of it; boat I have thought, and I should be Guilty, I must share that man’s Guilt, if I gept hiss mawney.  If you hat toldt me at the peginning—­if you hat peen frank with meboat it iss all righdt; you can go on; you ton’t see dese tings as I see them; and you haf cot a family, and I am a free man.  I voark to myself, and when I ton’t voark, I sdarfe to myself.  But.  I geep my handts glean, voark or sdarfe.  Gif him hiss mawney pack!  I am sawry for him; I would not hoart hiss feelings, boat I could not pear to douch him, and hiss mawney iss like boison!”

March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him the folly, the injustice, the absurdity of his course; it ended in their both getting angry, and in Lindau’s going away in a whirl of German that included Basil in the guilt of the man whom Lindau called his master.

“Well,” said Mrs. March.  “He is a crank, and I think you’re well rid of him.  Now you have no quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you can keep right on.”

“Yes,” said March, “I wish it didn’t make me feel so sneaking.  What a long day it’s been!  It seems like a century since I got up.”

“Yes, a thousand years.  Is there anything else left to happen?”

“I hope not.  I’d like to go to bed.”

“Why, aren’t you going to the theatre?” wailed Bella, coming in upon her father’s desperate expression.

“The theatre?  Oh yes, certainly!  I meant after we got home,” and March amused himself at the puzzled countenance of the child.  “Come on!  Is Tom ready?”

IX.

Fulkerson parted with the Marches in such trouble of mind that he did not feel able to meet that night the people whom he usually kept so gay at Mrs. Leighton’s table.  He went to Maroni’s for his dinner, for this reason and for others more obscure.  He could not expect to do anything more with Dryfoos at once; he knew that Dryfoos must feel that he had already made an extreme concession to March, and he believed that if he was to get anything more from him it must be after Dryfoos had dined.  But he was not without the hope, vague and indefinite as it might be, that he should find Lindau at Maroni’s, and perhaps should get some concession from him, some word of regret or apology which he could report to Dryfoos, and at lest make the means of reopening the affair with him; perhaps Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, would back down altogether, and for March’s sake would withdraw from all connection with ‘Every Other Week’ himself, and so leave everything serene.  Fulkerson felt capable, in his desperation, of delicately suggesting such a course to Lindau, or even of plainly advising it:  he did not care for Lindau a great deal, and he did care a great deal for the magazine.