In her place would come Edith with her children. All would center on
her in her grief.
And for no cause! Just a trick of chance, a street accident! And Roger grew
bitter and rebelled. Bruce was not the one of the family to die. Bruce, so
shrewd and vigorous, so vital, the practical man of affairs. Bruce had been
going the pace that kills--yes, Roger had often thought of it. But that had
nothing to do with this! If Bruce had died at fifty, say, as a result of
the life he had chosen, the fierce exhausting city which he had loved as a
man will love drink, then at least there would have been some sense of
fairness in it all! If the town had let him alone till his time! But to be
knocked down by an automobile! The devilish irony of it! No
reason--nothing! Just hideous luck!
Well, life was like that. As for Edith and her children, he would be glad
to have them here. Only, it would be different, the house would have to
change again. He was sorry, too, for Deborah. No wedding trip as she had
planned, no home awaiting her return.
So his mind went over his family.
But suddenly such thoughts fell away as trivial and of small account. For
these people would still be alive. And Bruce was dead, and Roger was old.
So he thought about Bruce and about himself, and all his children grew
remote. "You will live on in our children's lives." Was there no other
immortality? The clock ticked on the mantle and beside it "The Thinker"
brooded down.
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