And Barbara answered, audibly. "No."
She rose, adding, "Let me go and bring him." Conscience rose also and went with her. Just outside the closed door she covered her face in her hands and sank to the floor, moaning under her breath,
"What have I done? What shall I do? Oh God! why couldn't—why didn't I lie to him?" She ran down-stairs on tiptoe.
Her father, with Pettigrew at his side, was offering enthusiasm to a Geometry class. "Young gentlemen, a swift, perfect demonstration of a pure abstract truth is as beautiful and delightful to me—to any uncorrupted mind—as perfect music to a perfect ear."
But hearing that his daughter was seeking him, he withdrew.
The two had half mounted the stairs, when a hurried step sounded in the upper hall, and Johanna leaned wildly over the rail, her eyes streaming.
"Miss Barb! Miss Barb! run here! run! come quick, fo' de love of God! Oh, de chariots of Israel! de chariots of Israel! De gates o' glory lif'n up dey head!"
Barbara flew up the stairs and into her mother's room. Mr. Pettigrew stood silent among the crystalline beauties of mathematical truth, and a dozen students leaped to their feet as the daughter's long wail came ringing through the house mingled with the cry of Johanna.
"Too late! Too late! De daughteh o' Zion done gone in unbeseen!"
Through two days more Fair lingered, quartered at the Swanee Hotel, and conferred twice more with John March. In the procession that moved up the cedar avenue of the old Suez burying-ground, he stepped beside General Halliday, near its end. Among the headstones of the Montgomeries the long line stopped and sang,