He opened his eyes with a humorous smile. ‘It’s rather a comic-opera ending,’ he agreed. ‘I have a feeling that before the curtain goes down I should join hands with the bandits and come out and make my bow.’
‘There are lots of things to be done in America, and they’ll appreciate you more at home.’
‘I think I’ll buy a yacht and go in for racing, as your aunt suggests. I may come off in that—if I have a captain.’
Marcia sat silent a moment, looking down on his finely lined, sensitive face.
‘Uncle Howard,’ she said slowly, ‘it seems as if the good you do is some way cast up to the credit side of the world’s account and helps just so much to overcome the bad, whether any one knows about it or not. You may go away and leave it all behind and never be appreciated, but it’s a positive quantity just the same. It’s so much accomplished on the right side.’
Her uncle smiled again.
‘I’m afraid that’s rather too idealistic a philosophy for this generation. We’re living in a material age, and it takes something more solid than good intentions to make much impression on it. I have a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t born to set the world to rights. Many men are reformers in their youth, but I’m reaching the age when a club and a good dinner are excellent anodynes for my own and other people’s troubles.’
A shadow fell over her face and she looked down in her lap without answering.
After a moment he asked suddenly, ‘Where’s Sybert, Marcia?’
‘I think he’s downstairs waiting for the doctor.’