Rhoda had cabled her approval of the arrangements he had suggested, and her final message, for all the curtness of its telegraphic style, let him see that she was comforted by his offer to accompany the body to America. In an interval between his hurried arrangements for sailing he had time to wonder whether there might not be a trace of duplicity in his offer; but even so, he argued, it was a benevolent duplicity, and there was nothing to be ashamed of in the feeling of homesickness that had once or twice overtaken him, Even the most rip-roaring bohemian who had ever lived must at moments have had a desire to revisit the scenes of his youth.
But it was a homecoming unlike any he had ever dreamt of: Rhoda standing on the chilly dock, her face white and grave. And the tall young man beside her must be the odd thing that young John had grown into—doubtless excused from St. Basil's.
Together they travelled to Boston, on a train filled with shouting people who were bound for an intercollegiate football game, and the whole pattern of life seemed more than ever a meaningless design. One young man whose head stuck grotesquely out of a racoon coat was betting wildly on the chances of Yale, and if the winning of Yale were to bring about a milennium in which all life's most earnest strivings would receive the crown of success, he couldn't have been more deeply concerned. Young John watched the enthusiasts with a subdued absorption, as though
