“I can’t see that it’s different. We’ve always been a small minority——”

“Yes, perhaps. But that small minority represented the rising tide. We were part of something much larger than any small group inside the prison walls, and there were apertures in the walls.”

“Well, there still could be. I don’t see that withdrawal is the answer.” It was her vital energy she pitted now against his apathy. It was not the words she said, but her very attitude, her essence which she brought into play.

“I feel locked in, locked up, stifled,” he said.

“It was different in Europe?” She pushed him to remember, perhaps, the conviction, the warmth which he had brought back from that summer at the Salzburg Seminar, anything now that would wake the fighting man in him again.

“Good God, yes. In Europe the intellectual is still part of life itself. I’m tired of being a kind of governess without real responsibility, without dignity, someone who may be turned out like Lode at any moment at the whim of the employer—and who is only considered responsible as long as he is not responsible. They’re making eunuchs of us, Grace, that’s what it amounts to.” But though these were passionate words, the man who said them seemed to be whipping himself on to an emotion he no longer felt.

“That couldn’t happen at Harvard, Edward, after all—I mean, about Lode.”

“That’s it”—he turned on her with violence, with triumph—“that’s just what Goldberg said. As long as it doesn’t happen at Harvard, all’s well. As long as it doesn’t touch us, it isn’t real.”

“Don’t be cross with me. I can’t bear it.” She had wanted to call out his fire, but she could not bear it when it was directed at her. Everything might crumble around them, but Edward and she would stand fast together. And as long as they did, all was not lost.

“I couldn’t be cross with you,” he said quickly. “Forgive me.”

But when he had left and Ellen came to take the tray and she said, “Well, he ate two scones, Ellen, that is something,” there was no comfort in the words.

VIII

VIII