“It takes Edward’s sister,” he said gravely. He took off his glasses, rubbed them, and put them back on.

“You talked about accepting the facts—what then were the facts Edward should have accepted and didn’t? That’s what I really want to understand.” It occurred to her that only because Edward was dead was it possible for her to sit here in the very heart of his world and ask such a question. Had he been alive, his physical presence would have blocked the way—and besides never never would he have sat like this with her, open to question. She shivered.

“Are you cold?” Ivan Goldberg asked. “Here, sit on my coat.”

“No, I’m not cold. Only every now and then it’s as if—Edward—” she found she couldn’t go on.

“I know,” Goldberg said gently. “We talk and talk and the words mean nothing.”

“Still,” and Isabel turned to him with a smile, “if you can answer, please do.” Then she looked down at her hands thoughtfully. “You see, in a queer way it’s as if Edward had died for me a long time ago. And now every moment he’s becoming more alive.”

“Yes, that’s it,” Goldberg said quickly, “he’s terribly alive now—I wonder how long he will be.” He looked off across the Yard and smoked a moment, then said what he had obviously been turning over in his mind. “There were two things Edward couldn’t accept. For one, that his idea of socialism was old-fashioned. Socialism as we are seeing it in action in England, for instance, is growing to be anti-individualistic, bureaucratic, and exalts the state at the expense of all Edward meant. A general leveling down does not seem to mean greater opportunity for all, in fact quite the contrary. It’s as rigid as the statism Edward so feared and hated in Nazi Germany, and as formalistic, though of course not wicked. And that is why, I suppose, the Czechoslovakian coup was possible at all. But Edward simply couldn’t admit this. What he saw when he was over there was the fervor, the struggle, the hope, and certain exceptional human beings whom he loved and in whom he believed.

“That was one thing; the other was his sentimentality about the working man and about the unions, and his refusal to admit that in American democracy as it is, the intellectual is isolated, suspected and never an organic part of political life, at best an amateur, at worst a dupe as Wallace proved to be.”

“You make it sound so clear,” and Isabel sighed. “Why if it’s so clear was Edward important? Why do people mind so much? Why do they feel attacked?”