Time that makes us grateful for our defeats and turns our victories to chagrin dealt so with RoBards. Though he had hampered the work and denounced its trespass on the rights of the landholders, he felt glad now that he and they had been defeated. Chalender was gracious in his triumph, and felt all the more genial since the victory had been enhanced by the high mettle of the opponents. So everybody was happy and proud, and the aqueduct itself took on something of the sanctity of a long, long temple, a source of health and security and of unbounded future growth. RoBards spoke of this to Patty and said that the names of the men who had fought this long battle through would be immortal. “Who are they?” she said with a disconcerting abruptness. And to save him he could not think of them, though he knew the names of many picturesque criminals, and of persons whose only importance was some fashionable prestige. He knew the names of many who had pounded out a little poem or braided a piece of clever fiction. He knew the names of manufacturers of popular soaps and razor strops, but he could not recall the giants who had wrested the rocks from the hills and laid down the new channel for the river that would redeem the chief city of the continent. He had to refer to the memoir of the Commissioners and to read aloud the passage: “Samuel Stevens, Esq., was the presiding officer of the Board of Commissioners in 1829, whose name and services will be recorded with those of Stephen Allen, and Douglas and Jervis, for the enduring gratitude of the distant generations, whose health, comfort, and safety will, ‘while grass grows and water runs,’ continue to be promoted by the great work to which these gentlemen devoted such faithful and intelligent care.” Patty nodded: “Well, I’m sure I’m much obliged to them for making New York safe to live in. We can go back now, can’t we?” “Isn’t it beautiful up here?” he sighed, without much enthusiasm. “Yes, but the nights are bitter cold and the days are getting raw, and the leaves are nearly all gone. I’ve been here for years and the children have had all the diseases there are and got over them. They’re out of danger. Let’s go back, David.” When she called him by his first name it was like taking his heart in her soft fingers. He had no will to resist. Besides, the house had lost its integrity. It had played him false. It had permitted evil to prosper, and he had sacrificed his dignity and his revenge to conceal its shame. Nothing worse could happen in the big city than in the stealthy country. So he sighed again: “All right! let’s go back!” She sprang from her chair and kissed him and he took a poltroon delight in the syrup of her lips. She became amazingly a girl again and assailed with a frenzy the tasks of packing up for the removal to town, the closing of the country home, and reopening of the house in St. John’s Park.