“We are talking to Isabel now,” Orlando Fosca said firmly. “Edward lived close to the heart of the matter, always, Isabel, that was his greatness. But he couldn’t communicate the very essence of his belief and that was his tragedy. When he fought you, he was fighting himself.”

“But you’re not like that,” Isabel said gratefully. “You feel these things just as passionately, but——”

“I’m very old.” Orlando smiled his seraphic smile. “I do not expect miracles. And then,” he said more thoughtfully, “I am not an American, except by adoption, and late in my life. Perhaps I feel the pressures less, I don’t know,” and he sighed.

“Tell me about Edward,” Isabel said out of all that had happened in the last few minutes. “I need to know.”

“I do not think we shall understand the entire meaning of his suicide for some years to come. Let us leave it, then. What you must know is that as a scholar your brother was unmatched for fervor, understanding and integrity. We simply cannot do without him. The loss to American letters is immeasurable.” The delicate hands were clasped into fists now and the mild blue eyes blazed. The frail old man at her side had become a giant, and Isabel remembered what Dr. Willoughby had said about the fire.

“Yes, I think”—she stammered slightly—“I d-did know that.”

“Everyone knows that. What people do not know is what his influence was here, how he challenged the better students, and that he did challenge them as he did because he was involved actively and bitterly in the life outside the college. That is the heart of the matter,” he ended gravely, “you see.”

“I don’t see,” she said, able to be perfectly honest at last, “but maybe someday I will. I mean that you can be so wrong and so right at the same time, that you can shut out love and yet know so much about it, be so lonely and long so for communion—the communion of saints on earth, Dr. Willoughby said this morning—strange,” she murmured as if to herself.

They had come to the end of the line. The silence, in which they all looked at the fire, grew long but no one noticed it. Grace Kimlock gave a loud unconscious sigh. “We’re a long way from that,” she said bitterly.

“I wonder,” Orlando answered very gently. “It seems to me we have had this evening an intimation of it.”

IX

IX