The train began to move.
“It was awfully good of you. You have done a lot for me. I——”
The train bore him swiftly away, but standing as he did on the rear platform of the last car, the door at his back, Philip saw him wave his handkerchief and he responded in a like fashion, wishing he were certain Anson could see him as plainly as he saw Anson.
And so he stood until long after the train had vanished, a miserable lonely feeling within him.
It was all hopeless—the whole affair.
His mother would never be quite the same again, she could never live beyond the memory of that day. At last he muttered:
“Poor devil! I am positive he didn't mean to harm any one, nor did he mean to be bad. He has not the sense in the first place. What he did, was simply the blundering clumsy conduct of a fool.”
IX
Changes occurred in view of the altered relations between Franz and Margaret.
It came to be Perkins' nightly custom to formulate labored excuses that would enable him to retire to his own apartments, for as he said to Philip: “Just suppose it was one of us!”