So we began what Vio called the expiation, and what to me was no more than the attempt to persuade our friends that they didn’t know what they knew. This, according to Vio’s calculations, could be best achieved by never for an instant showing the white feather of an uncomfortable conscience. Our assurance was to be something like the Stroud aplomb on emerging from the courts of bankruptcy or divorce. To be unaware of anything odd in one’s conduct helped others to be unaware of it, too. A high spirit, a high head, a high hand carried one through difficult situations regardless of the strife of tongues. I didn’t think it necessary to remind Vio that the strife of tongues could go on even if we didn’t hear it. Nothing else was possible when Wolf’s fatuity blew the trumpet and beat the drum if the clamor showed signs of dying down. It wasn’t that he told the truth, but that he told lies so easy of detection. Alice Mountney did tell the truth as far as she knew it; but where she didn’t know it she supplied the deficiency by invention. That those so near us should be in conflict naturally called for comment, especially when Vio refused to let me speak. For the first few weeks I was too busily occupied to think of what any one was saying, seeing that the details I had to arrange were so unusual. Of the steps taken to become a living citizen again, and get back my property from my heirs, I give no account further than to say that they absorbed my attention. My standing in the community I was thus unable to compute till we were into the new year. By this time I had taken part in a number of family events on which I shall touch briefly. At Christmas we had gone to Washington to spend the festival with Minna and Tom Cantley. There we had met Ernestine, in one of the intervals of her flag-raising, and on the way back to Boston my brother Dan’s ship had unexpectedly arrived in New York. A series of domestic gatherings had therefore taken place, at all of which Vio had worked heroically. As she had generally hitherto ignored my family’s existence this graciousness was not without its effect. Where she did so much for my rehabilitation, those close to me in blood could hardly do less than follow her example. They followed it almost to the letter. That is to say, none of them asked me any questions, presumably wishing to spare both themselves and me embarrassment. Once or twice, when I attempted to speak of my experiences, the readiest plunged in with some topic that would lead us away from dangerous ground. If I yielded to this it was because speaking of myself at all was the deliberate exposure of nerves still raw and quivering. I could do it, but I couldn’t do it willingly.