He looked across at Margaret again, quiet, firm, persistent through tragedy, through all emotional upheaval, and a grim admiration shot through his hostility. After all she was consistent. With all his admiration for women, even at the height of his passion for Helen, he had never connected her or any woman with ability to follow a line of action with such consistency. He had some sense of what was going on in Margaret’s mind--an apperception of her refusal to let this tragedy break her down. He became conscious of Helen’s sigh. She sat beside him, her hands folded loosely in her lap. The minister talked on, performing with decent civility and entanglement of phrase, the rites of last courtesy for the dead. Gage wondered what he and Helen would do. He was glad that the mess about Freda Thorstad was cleared up. Not that it made any grave difference except in a certain clearness of atmosphere. If she got a divorce she couldn’t get it on those grounds. He wondered how their painfully sore minds could be explained in a divorce court which was accustomed to dealing with brutal incidents. Perhaps a separation would be better. He wondered how he was going to provide for her decently. It was going to be a long job building up the new practice. Things were breaking badly. Some emphatic phrase of the minister, starting out of his droning talk, brought Gage’s eyes back to the coffin. Strange how the sense of that silent form within it gave him fresh energy. Life had got Walter. Women had got him, in some obscure way. He felt his shoulders straighten with stubborn impulse. They wouldn’t get him. Deftly and logically his thought became practical. He would cut out all this thinking about women. He would--perhaps he would get the Thornton business. It meant a big retainer. He could have done it a few months ago. Now--he visualized old Thornton’s tight mouth, keen eyes. He’d want value received. Have to get in shape--cut out the booze--concentrate on business--men’s business. The actual phrase took shape in his mind. Men’s business. By God, that was how women got you. They got you thinking about them until you became obsessed, obsessed with them and their business. It was so and it had always been so. These new problems were not what people thought they were. They were not sex stuff. Perhaps they altered the grain of woman--changed her--but the adjustment of sex was as it always had been, between each man and each woman. Let the women go on, be what they wanted, do what they wanted. It made some of them better, some of them worse--put new figures in the dance but it was the same dance. Even if it wasn’t the minuet or the waltz there was still dancing. And there was choosing of partners.