Here life was life. Here was the family unit, the family a globe, all human society moving outside like the water around a bubble; a closed globe reflecting all else in curious unreality. Here three-score-and-ten was life, and a very long time. Life wasn’t a spiritual experiment, in matter; not an extension in matter of souls that had made innumerable such experiments, but straight work-a-day three-score-and-ten with oblivion at the birth end, and heaven or hell at the other. Here was All Time, in which it behooved man and woman to gather worldly goods and religious goods and love one another and hang together--for the rest was with God. Here senility was dear. The heavy-bodied, dim-minded grandfather was still grandfather, not the vanishing spirit of him. They would weep when the body passed. They would look to his place in the cemetery and say, “Here he lies.” Pidge Musser wanted to scream, not at the limitations, but at the kindness which was showered upon her. They were ready to perform the great transaction of taking her in, opening their hearts and house to a maiden, who would bring respectable additions to the Cobden line--sharing wealth, well-being, gentleness, the Cobden name which had been kept clean and useable and virile, and the Cobden God, who stood on the other side of death with angelic associates and rewards in His hands. Pidge continually felt that her next word would ruin everything; yet they unswervingly regarded her as becoming one with themselves; the process of assimilation already begun. They were patient, knowing of old that a new maiden would have incrustations of the world to check off, inequalities to be planed down. They set about not adjusting to her, but as she fancied, assimilating her, as the changeless Chinese assimilate a weaker race, breaking down the foreigner in themselves. She would become theirs to them with the years. “Oh, Dicky,” Pidge said, when they were in his car again. “I see. I understand. How did you dare to open those doors to me!” “I spoke of you at home, Pidge. They wouldn’t have understood if I hadn’t brought you soon. They were prepared to open their arms to you. They have their laws----” “But they are your laws. Dicky--how did you dare? Is it because you don’t know me, don’t see me at all? Do you see something which you want to see, that has nothing to do with me?” “What is it that troubles you so?” “Myself--always and forever myself! Oh, don’t you see I have nothing to do with them? Why, you’re comfortable, Dicky--your people are comfortable! _This_ is life to you--this, here and now! It isn’t to me. Life’s an exile to me, a banishment and coldness and pain. In all New York there are not two such opposites. My God is far away. Yours is here--a Person.” He answered hopelessly: “I can see how it would strike you, but I couldn’t cover up on account of that. I belong to them. I’m of them. Any front I might put on wouldn’t wear. You had to see us, Pidge----”