The man hasn't been changed by his son's death; it stunned, it benumbed him; but it couldn't change him.

It was an event, like any other, and it had to happen as much as his being born.

It was forecast from the beginning of time, and was as entirely an effect of his coming into the world--" "Basil! Basil!" cried his wife.

"This is fatalism!" "Then you think," he said, "that a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of God ?" and he laughed provokingly.

But he went on more soberly: "I don't know what it all means Isabel though I believe it means good.