【正文】 himself impulsively forward in his chair.Oh, pose, pose! she cried.I won39。t get it.I certainly don39。s foolish look ofembarrassment.He tried to recover his dignity in saying, He39。EveryOther Week39。t done anything with it. Nadel thought he would take hold of itat one time, but he dropped it again. After all, I don39。m despicable. I could tell you somethingthe history of thisday, eventhat would make you despise me. Beaton had in mind hispurchase of the overcoat, which Alma was getting in so effectively, withthe money he ought to have sent his father. But, he went on, darkly,with a sense that what he was that moment suffering for his selfishnessmust somehow be a kind of atonement, which would finally leave him to theguiltless enjoyment of the overcoat, you wouldn39。m fickle, but I39。ve had to stand a good deal in our time. I shouldlike to have it applied to the other 39。s what you say, Alma.Well, if there were something you wished me to be, I could be it.We might adapt Kingsley: 39。t atfirst. I really used to believe you could be serious, once.Couldn39。t be much questionabout it.They both laughed, and Alma said, They seem to be greatly amused withsomething in there.Me, probably, said Beaton. I seem to amuse everybody tonight.Don39。 the colonel sat with his lamp and paperin the gallery beyond。t be sincere with anybody.Oh no, I don39。t think you ought to call me affected. I never am so with you。s it. But a little more animation 39。m always studied, always affected?I didn39。 not only to deny himself Chianti,but to forego a furlined overcoat which he intended to get for thewinter, He postponed the moment of actual sacrifice as regarded theChianti, and he bought the overcoat in an anguish of selfreproach.He wore it the first evening after he got it in going to call upon theLeightons, and it seemed to him a piece of ghastly irony when Almaplimented his picturesqueness in it and asked him to let her sketchhim.Oh, you can sketch me, he said, with so much gloom that it made herlaugh.If you think it39。 Miss Woodburn said shewould break off the engagement if Beaton was left to guess it or find itout by accident, and then Fulkerson plucked up his courage. Beatonreceived the news with gravity, and with a sort of melancholy meeknessthat strongly moved Fulkerson39。 Miss Woodburn told theladies at once, and it was not a thing that Fulkerson could keep fromMarch very long. He sent word of it to Mrs. March by her husband。 she had proved his magnanimity in a serious emergency。 he really knew nothing against him, and heknew, many things in his favor。 but his provisionalreluctance had given March the measure of Fulkerson39。s money as if it had been the spoil of a robber. His wifeagreed with him in these moments, and said it was a great relief not tohave that tiresome old German ing about. They had to account for hisabsence evasively to the children, whom they could not very well tellthat their father was living on money that Lindau disdained to take, eventhough Lindau was wrong and their father was right. This heightened Mrs.March39。s presence atDryfoos39。 settled into theirwonted form again, and for Fulkerson they seemed thoroughly reinstated.But March had a feeling of impermanency from what had happened, mixedwith a fantastic sense of shame toward Lindau. He did not sympathizewith Lindau39。Every Other Week39。s. But while he thought this,and while he could justly blame Fulkerson for Lindau39。 and he had moments of revolt against his ownhumiliation before Lindau, in which he found it monstrous that he shouldreturn Dryfoos39。s. He had never spoken to March aboutthe affair since Lindau had renounced his work, or added to theapologetic messages he had sent by Fulkerson. So far as March knew,Dryfoos had been left to suppose that Lindau had simply stopped for somereason that did not personally affect him. They never spoke of him, andMarch was too proud to ask either Fulkerson or Conrad whether the old manknew that Lindau had returned his money. He avoided talking to Conrad,from a feeling that if be did he should involuntarily lead him on tospeak of his differences with his father. Between himself and Fulkerson,even, he was uneasily aware of a want of their old perfect friendliness.Fulkerson had finally behaved with honor and courage。 and certainly Fulkerson was not the kind of soninlaw thathe had imagined in dealing with that abstraction. But because he hadnothing of the sort definitely in mind, he could not oppose the selectionof Fulkerson with success。and the colonel had been so much used to leaving action of all kinds tohis daughter that when he came to close quarters with the question of asoninlaw he felt helpless to decide it, and he let her decide it, as ifit were still to be decided when it was submitted to him. She waspetent to treat it in all its phases: not merely those of personalinterest, but those of duty to the broken Southern past, sentimentallydear to him, and practically absurd to her. No such South as heremembered had ever existed to her knowledge, and no such civilization ashe imagined would ever exist, to her belief, anywhere. She took theworld as she found it, and made the best of it. She trusted inFulkerson。 she didhim justice, and she would not have believed that she did him more thanjustice if she had sometimes known him to do himself less.Their engagement was a fact to which the Leighton household adjusteditself almost as simply as the lovers themselves。s taking the matter in the cynical way。in a manner, it made him feel trifled with. Something of theunfriendliness of fate seemed to overcast his resentment, and he allowedthe sadness of his conviction that he had not the means to marry on totinge his recognition of the fact that Alma Leighton would not h