the present problem."

"They are--" Olive hesitated for a word.

"The professor is crushed, stunned. It never once has seemed to cross
his mind that this thing could be final; and now the fact has knocked
him over. As for Mrs. Opdyke, I worry less. She has lost all grip on
herself and is hysterical, with Ramsdell in attendance till I can send
somebody in. That leaves Reed alone, to hear the echoes of the general
unsettlement, and to think them over. Damn it all, Olive! It's bad
enough to be knocked out, in the first place; but it's a long way worse
to be out of it and to know that you are being wailed over. Mrs. Opdyke
is having a veritable wake. For heaven's sake, hurry down there and see
if you can't help Ramsdell to steady her down. If you can't, then let
her wake it out to her heart's content, and you go up and talk to Reed.
Else, he'll go mad."

And Olive went.

As the doctor had foretold, she found the house in psychological chaos.
In the library, the professor sat alone beside his desk. Of a sudden,
he had turned to the likeness of an old, old man, shrunken and bowed
with a grief which, taking his vitality drop by drop, had left him in
this present, final crisis, inert, passive, apathetic. He greeted Olive
listlessly, answered a question so vaguely as to warn her that any
effort on her part to rouse him would be worse than useless, worse
because it would change his apathy into renewed despair. For a few
minutes, the girl stood beside him, watching him silently, realizing
that the shock had been so sudden that it had taken away the power to
feel. Like a man knocked out in battle, he only had a dim realization
that he had been shot down, pierced in some vital part. It would take
him a long time to become aware of just the nature of his injury.

In the next room, Ramsdell was busy with Mrs. Opdyke, very busy, as
Olive saw, once she crossed the threshold. She also saw that Ramsdell
was as gentle as a woman in the crisis, as gentle and infinitely more
strong. There was really nothing for her to do, nothing that Ramsdell,
trained for such emergencies, could not do far, far better. And the
hysterical sobbing, the moans of the mother's anguish, could be plainly
heard through all the silent house. Olive pitied Mrs. Opdyke most
intensely; but she was conscious of a sudden longing to administer a
restorative box on the ear. It was unthinkable, to her young, elastic
strength, that any one could be so weak as to throw ov