Then March said, "I must go after him," and left his wife standing.
"Are you in want--hungry ?" he asked the man.
The man said he could not speak English, Monsieur.
March asked his question in French.
The man shrugged a pitiful, desperate shrug, "Mais, Monsieur--" March put a coin in his hand, and then suddenly the man's face twisted up; he caught the hand of this alms-giver in both of his and clung to it.

"Monsieur! Monsieur!" he gasped, and the tears rained down his face.
His benefactor pulled himself away, shocked and ashamed, as one is by such a chance, and got back to his wife, and the man lapsed back into the mystery of misery out of which he had emerged.
March felt it laid upon him to console his wife for what had happened.
"Of course, we might live here for years and not see another case like that; and, of course, there are twenty places where he could have gone for help if he had known where to find them." "Ah, but it's the possibility of his needing the help so badly as that," she answered.

"That's what I can't bear, and I shall not come to a place where such things are possible, and we may as well stop our house-hunting here at once." "Yes?
And what part of Christendom will you live in?
Such things are possible everywhere in our conditions." "Then we must change the conditions--" "Oh no; we must go to the theatre and forget them.

We can stop at Brentano's for our tickets as we pass through Union Square." "I am not going to the theatre, Basil.

I am going home to Boston to-night.