He was down first.

When his wife entered, he came to her, they touched hands, and she presently took a seat beside him.

More than once he paused suddenly in his eating, when he thought of his inexplicable case.

He was now face to face with a reversed situation.

He had once picked up a pebble from the brown dirt of a prairie, that he might toss it into the pool of this home life; and he had tossed it, and from the sweet bath there had come out a precious stone, which he longed to wear, and knew that he could not--not yet.
He could have coerced a lower being, but for his manhood's sake--he had risen to that now, it is curious how the dignity of fatherhood helps to make a man--he could not coerce here, and if he did, he knew that the product would be disaster.
He listened to her talk with Marion and Captain Vidall.