harking old house at night, shutting it up, and singing or whistling
while she sat quaking at the notion of their loneliness and their
absolute helplessness--an invalid and a little woman--in case anything
happened. She wanted him to get the man who did the odd jobs about the
house, to sleep there, but he laughed at her, and they kept on with their
usual town equipment of two serving-women. She could not account for his
spirits, which were usually so low when they were alone--"

"And not fighting," Minver suggested to me.

"--and when she asked him what the matter was he could not account for
them, either. But he said, one day, that the fear of death seemed to be
lifted from his soul, and that made her shudder."

Rulledge fetched a long sigh, and Minver interpreted, "Beginning to feel
that it's something like now."

"He said that for the first time within his memory he was rid of that
nether consciousness of mortality which had haunted his whole life, and
poisoned, more or less, all his pleasure in living. He had got a
reprieve, or a respite, and he felt like a boy--another kind of boy from
what he had ever been. He was full of all sorts of brilliant hopes and
plans. He had visions of success in business beyond anything he had
known, and talked of buying the place he had taken, and getting a summer
colony of friends about them. He meant to cut the property up, and make
the right kind of people inducements. His world seemed to have been
emptied of all trouble as well as all mortal danger."

"Haven't you psychologists some message about a condition like
that!" I asked.