"Well, you must have made a pretty good guess. But it was a failure. I ought to have failed, and I did. She said that unless her father liked it--And apparently he hasn't liked it." Burnamy smiled ruefully. "How do you know? She didn't know where you were!" "She could have got word to me if she had had good news for me. They've forwarded other letters from Pupp's. But it's all right; I had no business to go back to Carlsbad. Of course you didn't know I was in this house when you told them to come; and I must clear out. I had better clear out of Weimar, too." "No, I don't think so; I have no right to pry into your affairs, but--" "Oh, they're wide enough open!" "And you may have changed your mind. I thought you might, when I saw you yesterday at Belvedere--" "I was only trying to make bad worse." "Then I think the situation has changed entirely through what Mr. Stoller said to Mr. March." "I can't see how it has. I committed an act of shabby treachery, and I'm as much to blame as if he still wanted to punish me for it." "Did Mr. March say that to you?" "No; I said that to Mr. March; and he couldn't answer it, and you can't. You're very good, and very kind, but you can't answer it." "I can answer it very well," she boasted, but she could find nothing better to say than, "It's your duty to her to see her and let her know." "Doesn't she know already?" "She has a right to know it from you. I think you are morbid, Mr. Burnamy. You know very well I didn't like your doing that to Mr. Stoller. I didn't say so at the time, because you seemed to feel it enough yourself. But I did like your owning up to it," and here Mrs. March thought it time to trot out her borrowed battle-horse again. "My husband always says that if a person owns up to an error, fully and faithfully, as you've always done, they make it the same in its consequences to them as if it had never been done." "Does Mr. March say that?" asked Burnamy with a relenting smile. "Indeed he does!" Burnamy hesitated; then he asked, gloomily again: "And what about the consequences to the, other fellow?" "A woman," said Mrs. March, "has no concern with them. And besides, I think you've done all you could to save Mr. Stoller from the consequences." "I haven't done anything." "No matter. You would if you could. I wonder," she broke off, to prevent his persistence at a point where her nerves were beginning to give way, "what can be keeping Mr. March?" Nothing much more important, it appeared later, than the pleasure of sauntering through the streets on the way to the house of Schiller, and looking at the pretty children going to school, with books under their arms. It was the day for the schools to open after the long summer vacation, and there was a freshness of expectation in the shining faces which, if it could not light up his own graybeard visage, could at least touch his heart: