"The poor man seems to have been in the wrong at the time," said Miss
Vance.
"I could almost say he had earned the right to be wrong. He's a man of
the most generous instincts, and a high ideal of justice, of equity--too
high to be considered by a policeman with a club in his hand," said
March, with a bold defiance of his wife's different opinion of Lindau.
"It's the policeman's business, I suppose, to club the ideal when he
finds it inciting a riot."
"Oh, I don't blame Mr. Lindau; I don't blame the policeman; he was as
much a mere instrument as his club was. I am only trying to find out how
much I am to blame myself. I had no thought of Mr. Dryfoos's going
there--of his attempting to talk with the strikers and keep them quiet; I
was only thinking, as women do, of what I should try to do if I were a
man.
"But perhaps he understood me to ask him to go--perhaps my words sent him
to his death."
She had a sort of calm in her courage to know the worst truth as to her
responsibility that forbade any wish to flatter her out of it. "I'm
afraid," said March, "that is what can never be known now." After a
moment he added: "But why should you wish to know? If he went there as a
peacemaker, he died in a good cause, in such a way as he would wish to
die, I believe.
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