Fifteen minutes later on, Ramsdell came up the stairs. When he had gone down them stealthily and tiptoed through the lower hall, he wiped his eyes, then blew his nose in raucous triumph.
"The one thing I 'ave halways 'oped would 'appen!" he said impressively.
Four days afterward, Brenton came home again, came straight from the burial service on the country hillside to take up his old life in the wifeless home. As a matter of course, his first evening he spent with Opdyke.
Opdyke, looking for change in him, was not disappointed. Change was evident, and of a sort for which Opdyke had scarcely dared to hope. Of sadness there was curiously little sign; the black band on his sleeve was the only outward show of mourning, and Brenton's face explained the lack. Even in the few days of his new experience, the old indecision seemed to have left his face for ever, and with it much of the old sadness. He carried himself more alertly, too, as if, for the future, life were too full of purpose to permit of any indecision or delay.
Of his trouble, he said singularly little.
"Poor Catie! She died, loyal to me, and happy in her belief," he told Reed briefly. "It was the end she would have chosen for herself. Next time we meet each other, though, we shall understand each other better and have better patience." And that was all he said, then or afterwards. Instead, he congratulated Reed upon his new, great happiness.
After a time,—
"Now, shall you go to Whittenden?" Opdyke asked him.
Brenton shook his head.
"No. My place is here. So far, I have never worked out much good from any of the chances I've had given me. I'd better do it, here and now, without wasting time by any further change. As for the quality of the work, Opdyke, I've been thinking things, the past few days. There are men in plenty doing their level best to work out God's existence in the lives of his created children. For me, I think it's better worth the while to try to prove that universal laws exist, and, out of those laws, prove God."