Dryfoos looked at him with astonishment; then he struck his hat down on his head, and stamped out of the room and down the stairs; and a vague pity came into March’s heart that was not altogether for himself.  He might be the greater sufferer in the end, but he was sorry to have got the better of that old man for the moment; and he felt ashamed of the anger into which Dryfoos’s anger had surprised him.  He knew he could not say too much in defence of Lindau’s generosity and unselfishness, and he had not attempted to defend him as a political economist.  He could not have taken any ground in relation to Dryfoos but that which he held, and he felt satisfied that he was right in refusing to receive instructions or commands from him.  Yet somehow he was not satisfied with the whole affair, and not merely because his present triumph threatened his final advantage, but because he felt that in his heat he had hardly done justice to Dryfoos’s rights in the matter; it did not quite console him to reflect that Dryfoos had himself made it impossible.  He was tempted to go home and tell his wife what had happened, and begin his preparations for the future at once.  But he resisted this weakness and kept mechanically about his work, opening the letters and the manuscripts before him with that curious double action of the mind common in men of vivid imaginations.  It was a relief when Conrad Dryfoos, having apparently waited to make sure that his father would not return, came up from the counting-room and looked in on March with a troubled face.

“Mr. March,” he began, “I hope father hasn’t been saying anything to you that you can’t overlook.  I know he was very much excited, and when he is excited he is apt to say things that he is sorry for.”

The apologetic attitude taken for Dryfoos, so different from any attitude the peremptory old man would have conceivably taken for himself, made March smile.  “Oh no.  I fancy the boot is on the other leg.  I suspect I’ve said some things your father can’t overlook, Conrad.”  He called the young man by his Christian name partly to distinguish him from his father, partly from the infection of Fulkerson’s habit, and partly from a kindness for him that seemed naturally to express itself in that way.

“I know he didn’t sleep last night, after you all went away,” Conrad pursued, “and of course that made him more irritable; and he was tried a good deal by some of the things that Mr. Lindau said.”

“I was tried a good deal myself,” said March.  “Lindau ought never to have been there.”

“No.”  Conrad seemed only partially to assent.

“I told Mr. Fulkerson so.  I warned him that Lindau would be apt to break out in some way.  It wasn’t just to him, and it wasn’t just to your father, to ask him.”

“Mr. Fulkerson had a good motive,” Conrad gently urged.  “He did it because he hurt his feelings that day about the pension.”

“Yes, but it was a mistake.  He knew that Lindau was inflexible about his principles, as he calls them, and that one of his first principles is to denounce the rich in season and out of season.  I don’t remember just what he said last night; and I really thought I’d kept him from breaking out in the most offensive way.  But your father seems very much incensed.”