"Love is all there is, anyhow, don’t you think, Mrs. Follett?" "Yes; but it gets no chance in this world." "Or it is the only thing that does get a chance?" "It may be the only thing that does get a chance, but that chance is small. There’s no hope for the world. Don’t think there is, because you’ll be disappointed. Each time your disappointment is worse than the last, till you end in despair." It was the strain Jennie felt obliged to interrupt. "Momma, Mr. Collingham is going to see Teddy. Don’t you want him to take a message?" "Only the message I’ve given him myself—that it’s only a little way over, and that one of two things must happen then. It will either be sleep, in which nothing will matter, or it will be life, in which he’ll be free—understood—supported—instead of being beaten and crushed and mangled, as everyone is here. Tell him that." He felt it his duty to be cheerier. "On the other hand, we may get him off; or if we can’t get him off altogether—" "What good would that do—your getting him off? You’d be throwing him back again on a world that doesn’t want him." "Oh, but surely the world _does_—" "Yes; the world does—I’m wrong—it does to the same extent that it wanted his father—to give it every ounce of his strength with a pittance for his pay—to spend and be spent till he’s good for nothing more—and then to be thrown aside to starve. It’s possible that even now Teddy would be willing to do this if they’d only let him live; but tell him it’s not good enough. I’ve told him, and I don’t think he believes me; but you’re a man, and perhaps you can make him see it." "Yes, momma dear, he’ll do the best he can—" "It won’t be the best he can if he tries to keep him here. We’ve passed on, my boy and I. Only our bodies are still on the earth, and that for just a little while. A year from now and we’ll both be safe—so safe!—and yet you’d try to keep us in a world where men make a curse of everything." ———— But Teddy himself was less reconciled than his mother to bidding the world good-by. In proportion as his physical strength returned, the fate that had overtaken him became more and more preposterous. To suppose that he had of his own criminal intention stolen money and killed a man was little short of insane. A man had been killed by a pistol he held in his hand; he had taken money because the need was such that he couldn’t help himself; but he, Teddy Follett, was neither a thief nor a murderer in any sense involving the exercise of will. He was sure of that. He declared it to himself again and again and again. It was all that gave him fighting force, compelling him to insist, to assert himself, and to protest in season and out of season against being shut up in a cell.