ight 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 w