We are quite a party. Mother is here, come to rejoice over her restored first-born son; the Brat is here; he has run over from Oxford. Musgrave is here. I am in such spirits; I do not know what has come to me. It seems to me as if I were newly born into a fresh and altogether good and jovial world. Not even the presence of Musgrave lays any constraint upon my spirits. For the first time since the dark day in Brindley Wood, I meet him without embarrassment. I answer him: I even address him now and then. All the small civilizations of life--the flower-garnished table; the lamps softly burning; the evening-dresses (for the first time we have dressed for dinner)--fill me with a keen pleasure, that I should have thought such little etceteras were quite incapable of affording. I seem as if I could not speak without broad smiles. I am tired, indeed, still, and my eyes are heavy. But what does that matter? Life has won! Life has won! We are still all six here! "Nancy!" says the Brat, regarding me with an eye of friendly criticism, "I think you are _cracked_ to-night!--Do you remember what our nurses used to tell us? 'Much laughing always ends in much crying.'" But I do not heed: I laugh on. Barbara is not nearly so boisterously merry as I, but then she never is. She is more overdone with fatigue than I, I think; for she speaks little--though what she does say is full of content and gladness--and there are dark streaks of weariness and watching under the serene violets of her eyes. She is certainly very tired; as we go to bed at night she seems hardly able to get up the stairs, but leans heavily on the banisters--one who usually runs so lightly up and down. Yes, _very_ tired, but what of that? it would be unnatural, _most_ unnatural if she were not; she will be all right to-morrow, after a good long night's rest--yes, all right. I say this to her, still gayly laughing as I give her my last kiss, and she smiles and echoes, "All right!" CHAPTER XLIX. "So mayst thou die, as I do; fear and pain Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!" All right! Yes, for Barbara it _is_ all right. Friends, I no more doubt that than I doubt that I am sitting here now, with the hot tears on my cheeks, telling you about it; but oh! not--_not_ for us! "Much laughing will end in much crying." The Brat was right. God knows the old saw has come true enough in my case. I exulted too soon. Too soon I said that the all-victor was vanquished. He might have left us our one little victory, might not he?--knowing that at best it was but a reprieve, that soon or late--soon or late, Algy--we all, every human flower that ever blossomed out in this world's sad garden, must be embraced in the icy iron of his arms.