He looked about. Mrs. Nixon, Miss Maynard, and Mr. Derwent were in the middle seat as before. The stout gentleman and another man were in the seat in front of them. “And you’d put me in there with four hundred pounds of tourist?” went on Irving. “Nay, nay, Betsy. I’ll get over there in the corner beyond you and promise to keep my place.” “Oh, they’re going to start,” said Betsy in trepidation, “and—and she isn’t here. Couldn’t you get him to wait, Mr. Irving? I—” Irving swung into the stage as the horses moved. “My dear Betsy, we’ve ceased to be individuals. We’re part of a system,” he said as he seated himself beside her. “When the Park authorities say this stage moves, it moves.” Betsy leaned back, her lip caught under her teeth and her expression so abstracted that Irving stared at her curiously. “I do believe,” he said incredulously, “that Betsy Foster, clever Betsy, has fallen in love.” “How you talk!” returned his companion, recovering herself; and being quite conscious of Rosalie and a little conscious of her fire-lit fancies, an astonishing color rose under her sallow skin. Irving laughed. “After all these years, our sedate Betsy—” “How you act, Mr. Irving!” The speaker tried not to smile, but continued to look so guilty and red-faced that Irving’s laughter grew. “After all these years; the heart that I thought was mine—given to a heaver!” “I’d like to have said good-by to her,” said Betsy. “She’s—she ain’t the—the independent kind—and I—” Irving looked at her kindly. “How does that big heart of yours find room in that slender body?” he asked. “Cats and dogs and horses and humans—it’s all one to you. You’ve taken a brief to defend them all.” “Oh, Mr. Irving!”—Betsy looked off at the landscape,—“if I could defend them all!” “Why that tragic look?” “Your words made me think again, as I so often do, that in a world full of so much beauty as this, people are cuttin’ up live animals in the name of science, and the law permits it.” Irving shook his head. He had heard before Betsy’s horror-stricken views of vivisection. “Human life is the most precious of all,” he reminded her, now. “Yes, but don’t just as fine physicians as any say that the unnatural conditions in vivisection prevent any good coming from it? Yes, they do; and supposing it _did_ do any good! Don’t most civilized people believe in an after-life? If they’re going to live to eternity anyway, and have got to pass through death some time, how can they be willing to have their lives in this world prolonged a few years at the cost of torturing innocent animals? That’s what I say. How _can_ they—and then expect any heaven awaits _them_?” “I haven’t thought much about it,” said Irving.