He had always thought he would like to be able to sit right down quietly to think out a thing or two. Now he certainly had all the sitting down quietly that anybody could want. Well, he liked it as much as he had thought he would. And more! He brought under his consideration one after another of the new elements of his new life, holding them firmly under the lens of his intelligence, focusing on them all his attention, and to his astonished relief saw them one by one yield to his analysis, give up their tortured, baffling aspect of mystery and tragedy, and lie open to his view, open to his hand, open to his forward-looking planning. He had never lived with his family before, he had never seen more of their lives than the inexplicable and tangled loose ends over which they all stumbled wretchedly. Now that for months he had had the opportunity for continuous observation, he perceived that there was nothing so darkly inexplicable, after all, nothing that resisted a patient, resourceful attempt to follow up those loose ends and straighten out some of the knots. Even in the tragic tangle of Stephen’s strange little nature, Lester felt he had begun to find his way. He had found out this much: Stephen had more vitality than all the rest of them put together (except Eva, of course). And when it did not find free outlet it strangled and poisoned him, made him temporarily insane, in the literal sense of the word, like a strong masterful man shut up by an accident deep in a coal-mine, who might fall insanely to work with his bare hands to claw away the obstructing masses of dead, brute matter that kept him from the light of day! That was what Stephen made him think of; that was, so Lester divined, the meaning of the wild, fierce flame in Stephen’s eyes which had always so shocked and grieved them. They were of another breed, the kind who would sit down patiently and resignedly to die, not fight till the last minute with bleeding hands. All but Eva--oh, poor darling Eva! How much better Lester understood his wife after those few months of observing her in a life that suited her than after fourteen years of seeing her grimly and heroically enduring a life that did not. Was this Eva the same as the old one? This Eva who came in every evening tired, physically tired as he had never seen her, but appeased, satisfied, fulfilled, having poured out in work she loved the furious splendor of her vigor.