Major Amberson remained dry-eyed through the time that followed: he knew that this separation from his daughter would be short, that the separation which had preceded it was the long one. He worked at his ledgers no more under his old gas drop-light, but would sit all evening staring into the fire, in his bedroom, and not speaking unless someone asked him a question. He seemed almost unaware of what went on around him, and those who were with him thought him dazed by Isabel\'s death, guessing that he was lost in reminiscences and vague dreams. "Probably his mind is full of pictures of his youth, or the Civil War, and the days when he and mother were young married people and all of us children were jolly little things—and the city was a small town with one cobbled street and the others just dirt roads with board sidewalks." This was George Amberson\'s conjecture, and the others agreed; but they were mistaken. The Major was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. No business plans which had ever absorbed him could compare in momentousness with the plans that absorbed him now, for he had to plan how to enter the unknown country where he was not even sure of being recognized as an Amberson—not sure of anything, except that Isabel would help him if she could. His absorption produced the outward effect of reverie, but of course it was not. The Major was occupied with the first really important matter that had taken his attention since he came home invalided, after the Gettysburg campaign, and went into business; and he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime between then and to-day—all his buying and building and trading and banking—that it all was trifling and waste beside what concerned him now. He seldom went out of his room, and often left untouched the meals they brought to him there; and this neglect caused them to shake their heads mournfully, again mistaking for dazedness the profound concentration of his mind. Meanwhile, the life of the little bereft group still forlornly centering upon him began to pick up again, as life will, and to emerge from its own period of dazedness. It was not Isabel\'s father but her son who was really dazed. A month after her death he walked abruptly into Fanny\'s room, one night, and found her at her desk, eagerly adding columns of figures with which she had covered several sheets of paper. This mathematical computation was concerned with her future income to be produced by the electric headlight, now just placed on the general market; but Fanny was ashamed to be discovered doing anything except mourning, and hastily pushed the sheets aside, even as she looked over her shoulder to greet her hollow-eyed visitor. "George! You startled me." "I beg your pardon for not knocking," he said huskily. "I didn\'t think." She turned in her chair and looked at him solicitously. "Sit down, George, won\'t you?" "No. I just wanted—" "I could hear you walking up and down in your room," said Fanny. "You were doing it ever since dinner, and it seems to me you\'re at it almost every evening. I don\'t believe it\'s good for you—and I know it would worry your mother terribly if she—" Fanny hesitated. "See here," George said, breathing fast, "I want to tell you once more that what I did was right. How could I have done anything else but what I did do?" "About what, George?" "About everything!" he exclaimed; and he became vehement. "I did the right thing, I tell you! In heaven\'s name, I\'d like to know what else there was for anybody in my position to do! It would have been a dreadful thing for me to just let matters go on and not interfere—it would have been terrible! What else on earth was there for me to do? I had to stop that talk, didn\'t I? Could a son do less than I did? Didn\'t it cost me something to do it? Lucy and I\'d had a quarrel, but that would have come round in time—and it meant the end forever when I turned her father back from our door. I knew what it meant, yet I went ahead and did it because knew it had to be done if the talk was to be stopped. I took mother away for the same reason. I knew that would help to stop it. And she was happy over there—she was perfectly happy. I tell you, I think she had a happy life, and that\'s my only consolation. She didn\'t live to be old; she was still beautiful and young looking, and I feel she\'d rather have gone before she got old. She\'d had a good husband, and all the comfort and luxury that anybody could have—and how could it be called anything but a happy life? She was always cheerful, and when I think of her I can always see her laughing—I can always hear that pretty laugh of hers. When I can keep my mind off of the trip home, and that last night, I always think of her gay and laughing. So how on earth could she have had anything but a happy life? People that aren\'t happy don\'t look cheerful all the time, do they? They look unhappy if they are unhappy; that\'s how they look! See here"—he faced her challengingly —"do you deny that I did the right thing?" "Oh, I don\'t pretend to judge," Fanny said soothingly, for his voice and gesture both partook of wildness. "I know you think you did, George." "Think I did!" he echoed violently. "My God in heaven!" And he began to walk up and down the floor. "What else was there to do? What, choice did I have? Was there any other way of stopping the talk?" He stopped, close in front of her, gesticulating, his voice harsh and loud: "Don\'t you hear me? I\'m asking you: Was there any other way on earth of protecting her from the talk?" Miss Fanny looked away. "It died down before long, I think," she said nervously. "That shows I was right, doesn\'t it?" he cried. "If I hadn\'t acted as I did, that slanderous old Johnson woman would have kept on with her slanders—she\'d still be—" "No," Fanny interrupted. "She\'s dead. She dropped dead with apoplexy one day about six weeks after you left. I didn\'t mention it in my letters because I didn\'t want—I thought—" "Well, the other people would have kept on, then. They\'d have—" "I don\'t know," said Fanny, still averting her troubled eyes. "Things are so changed here, George. The other people you speak of—one hardly knows what\'s become of them. Of course not a great many were doing the talking, and they—well, some of them are dead, and some might as well be—you never see them any more—and the rest, whoever they were, are probably so mixed in with the crowds of new people that seem never even to have heard of us—and I\'m sure we certainly never heard of them—and people seem to forget things so soon—they seem to forget anything. You can\'t imagine how things have changed here!" George gulped painfully before he could speak. "You—you mean to sit there and tell me that if I\'d just let things go on—Oh!" He swung away, walking the floor again. "I tell you I did the only right thing! If you don\'t think so, why in the name of heaven can\'t you say what else I should have done? It\'s easy enough to criticize, but the person who criticizes a man ought at least to tell him what else he should have done! You think I was wrong!" "I\'m not saying so," she said. "You did at the time!" he cried. "You said enough then, I think! Well, what have you to say now, if you\'re so sure I was wrong?" "Nothing, George." "It\'s only because you\'re afraid to!" he said, and he went on with a sudden bitter divination: "You\'re reproaching yourself with what you had to do with all that; and you\'re trying to make up for it by doing and saying what you think mother would want you to, and you think I couldn\'t stand it if I got to thinking I might have done differently. Oh, I know! That\'s exactly what\'s in your mind: you do think I was wrong! So does Uncle George. I challenged him about it the other day, and he answered just as you\'re answering—evaded, and tried to be gentler I don\'t care to be handled with gloves! I tell you I was right, and I don\'t need any coddling by people that think I wasn\'t! And I suppose you believe I was wrong not to let Morgan see her that last night when he came here, and she—she was dying. If you do, why in the name of God did you come and ask me? You could have taken him in! She did want to see him. She—" Miss Fanny looked startled. "You think—" "She told me so!" And the tortured young man choked. "She said— \'just once.\' She said \'I\'d like to have seen him—just once!\' She meant—to tell him good-bye! That\'s what she meant! And you put this on me, too; you put this responsibility on me! But I tell you, and I told Uncle George, that the responsibility isn\'t all mine! If you were so sure I was wrong all the time—when I took her away, and when I turned Morgan out—if you were so sure, what did you let me do it for? You and Uncle George were grown people, both of you, weren\'t you? You were older than I, and if you were so sure you were wiser than I, why did you just stand around with your hands hanging down, and let me go ahead? You could have stopped it if it was wrong, couldn\'t you?" Fanny shook her head. "No, George," she said slowly. "Nobody could have stopped you. You were too strong, and—" "And what?" he demanded loudly. "And she loved you—too well." George stared at her hard, then his lower lip began to move convulsively, and he set his teeth upon it but could not check its frantic twitching. He ran out of the room. She sat still, listening. He had plunged into his mother\'s room, but no sound came to Fanny\'s ears after the sharp closing of the door; and presently she rose and stepped out into the hall—but could hear nothing. The heavy black walnut door of Isabel\'s room, as Fanny\'s troubled eyes remained fixed upon it, seemed to become darker and vaguer; the polished wood took the distant ceiling light, at the end of the hall, in dim reflections which became mysterious; and to Fanny\'s disturbed mind the single sharp point of light on the bronze door-knob was like a continuous sharp cry in the stillness of night. What interview was sealed away from human eye and ear within the lonely darkness on the other side of that door—in that darkness where Isabel\'s own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great walnut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument might be there vainly striving to confute the gentle dead? "In God\'s name, what else cou............