The panic was stopped, but the business of the country lay in ruins.  For a week its financial heart had ceased to beat, and through all the arteries of commerce, and every smallest capillary, there was stagnation.  Hundreds of firms had failed, and the mills and factories by the thousands were closing down.  There were millions of men out of work.  Throughout the summer the railroads had been congested with traffic, and now there were a quarter of a million freight cars laid by.  Everywhere were poverty and suffering; it was as if a gigantic tidal wave of distress had started from the Metropolis and rolled over the continent.  Even the oceans had not stopped it; it had gone on to England and Germany—­it had been felt even in South America and Japan.

One day, while Montague was still trembling with the pain of his experience, he was walking up the Avenue, and he met Laura Hegan coming from a shop to her carriage.

“Mr. Montague,” she exclaimed, and stopped with a frank smile of greeting.  “How are you?”

“I am well,” he answered.

“I suppose,” she added, “you have been very busy these terrible days.”

“I have been more busy observing than doing,” he replied.

“And how is Alice?”

“She is well.  I suppose you have heard that she is engaged.”

“Yes,” said Miss Hegan.  “Harry told me the first thing.  I was perfectly delighted.”

“Are you going up town?” she added.  “Get in and drive with me.”

He entered the carriage, and they joined the procession up the Avenue.  They talked for a few minutes, then suddenly Miss Hegan said, “Won’t you and Alice come to dinner with us some evening this week?”

Montague did not answer for a moment.

“Father is home now,” Miss Hegan continued.  “We should like so much to have you.”

He sat staring in front of him.  “No,” he said at last, in a low voice.  “I would rather not come.”

His manner, even more than his words, struck his companion.  She glanced at him in surprise.

“Why?” she began, and stopped.  There was a silence.

“Miss Hegan,” he said at last, “I might make conventional excuses.  I might say that I have engagements; that I am very busy.  Ordinarily one does not find it worth while to tell the truth in this social world of ours.  But somehow I feel impelled to deal frankly with you.”

He did not look at her.  Her eyes were fixed upon him in wonder.  “What is it?” she asked.

And he replied, “I would rather not meet your father again.”

“Why!  Has anything happened between you and father?” she exclaimed in dismay.

“No,” he answered; “I have not seen your father since I had lunch with you in Newport.”

“Then what is it?”

He paused a moment.  “Miss Hegan,” he began, “I have had a painful experience in this panic.  I have lived through it in a very dreadful way.  I cannot get over it—­I cannot get the images of suffering out of my mind.  It is a very real and a very awful thing to me—­this wrecking of the lives of tens of thousands of people.  And so I am hardly fitted for the amenities of social life just at present.”