EMMA MALLESON tossed the coverlet aside, and clasping her hands above her head stared at the faint whiteness of the ceiling. To her sleepless eyes, grown accustomed to the darkness, it seemed not the familiar roof of her bedroom, but the blurred vault of some undefined new region into which she was drifting---a region void of the things she could know and touch, hollow in its loneliness, and haunted by the noise of unsympathetic voices. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, closed her eyes, and listened. All the imagined voices mingled inextricably with the rapid pulsing of her heart and the rush of the insistent deep currents of life which urged her body to action, but left her mind despairing. She was coming to dread the hours in bed. During the day her will held her brave and steady, but night in the quiet house stretched on interminably, each minute pitilessly rolling up its little weight to break her spirit.

She knew that her husband was fatally ill. And she knew that he carried the realization about with him calmly, indifferently. It was this apparent indifference that amazed and wounded her. Reticence she would have expected, because with all her understanding of his strange nature she had to acknowledge in him an ultimate retreat which her love could not penetrate, and from which no word came forth. It would be like him to hide his trouble behind that final wall. In the very austerity of his silence she would have read his rebellion and his pain.

But no such rebellion seemed to exist. From all she could make out, her husband cared not one iota. She told herself that his indifference must be part of his malady---but she knew better. It was, rather, part of the exasperating, inscrutable man she had married. It frightened her by its unnaturalness. The protest that he would not feel she felt vicariously. Yet how futile and helpless! And then the thought would recur: Could it be that her husband viewed death so contemptuously? Impossible! Death, that meant their parting---and a parting which, by his own views of the creational scheme, would be final as the crumbling of their bones.

Here, at the edge of hysteria, her strong common sense checked her. Why must she suppose so much? Why not act as one always did when people were ill---face the matter, talk about it, look toward recovery, not toward death? And her head gave its honest answer: she could not question Harry because she knew he might instantly, perhaps jokingly, tell her the truth . . . . Of course, there was old Dr. Walters. . .

Emma rose, wrapped her dressing-gown about her shoulders, and walked nervously to and fro in the narrow space between the bed and the dresser. Courage! No giving way! She resolutely stifled the impulse to scream. Her fingers pinched the thin stuff of her nightgown, twisted it, dropped it, clasped and unclasped; her bare feet pressed hard against the cool, worn carpet. Over her rapid breathing she listened, half consciously, to a monotonous tinkling like the sound of many little muffled drums---summer rain falling on the slate roof of the porch, just below her window.

The physical exertion warmed her limbs. At length, drawing a long breath, she ceased her walking, and stood looking out into the blue-black night. Her hands relaxed, her fingers straightened along her thighs.

"There," she whispered, "that's over, safely."

For a time she remained motionless, the current of her thought held in cautious control. She felt herself waiting anxiously for the enemy to withdraw, sullen and threatening, into the distance. Gradually calm stole back to her senses; the darkness of her room grew friendly; the noise of the rain merely the inconsequential prattle of a summer shower.

She fumbled about, found her slippers and, opening the door carefully, tiptoed across the hall to the entrance to her husband's room, where she stood listening, ear pressed to the panel. Then, weary, but relieved, she returned, drew the dressing-gown closer and sat down by the window. The breeze, saturated with fragrance, flowed about her face and stirred, as with small cool fingers, the heavy masses of her hair.

"I must be sensible," she thought, "and try to see the right way to meet whatever is going to happen. And the right way means more than just morally right. No matter how morally right I am it'll do no good if my nerves are so strung that I'm useless to care for---to care for any one." A dull discouragement overcame her for the moment.

"But how can I do anything until he tells me about it? Or until I screw up courage to ask him . . . ?" The grotesqueness of the situation struck her anew. She, his wife, to be hesitating, letting her fears outweigh her sane convictions in so vital a matter . . . . There was just the rub! So vital a matter. . .

"I don't know what to do! I've become downright superstitious," she thought despairingly. The strange notion possessed her that her husband would secretly resent any interference on her part; that in this, his last and most enthralling spiritual experiment, he would prefer to be alone.

Her mind ranged back over the years since her marriage; a fabric spun in ecstasy, faith and bewilderment; years with a monochrome background of happiness that threw into telling relief the scattered bright figures of pain.

"When have I ever been sure?" she asked herself, in sudden terror. "When have I ever understood him---or John---or anything!"

Her hands flew to her breast; she resolutely fought off the hysteria that threatened again. With a desolately humorous little smile she rose, hesitated, and finally moved slowly toward the bed.

"I must avoid these---dramatics," she murmured. "I'm only a tiresome, middle-aged woman, with a sick husband, and a fine big son---and I'm tired, and ought to be asleep. . .:

JOHN MALLESON'S decision to follow his father in the practice of law was the result as much of a growing sentimental fondness as of cool consideration or educational training. As with most young men, during his college days the goal had been but tentatively set. He had no special aptitude for the formulas and no true liking for the shrewd but transparent assumptions of legal science. He was at heart too impatient, too skeptical of the ability of man to understand his fellows.

"Which is one reason you'd make a hell of a good lawyer," remarked his father.

John's real incentive rose from the deep, unvoiced loyalty which asks no corroboration. Buried beneath his maturity, his infantile idolatry remained. To be like his father, to do as his father did---these naive ambitions, now perhaps half submerged, still seemed to him the best.

The feeling extended even to externals. He found no serious objection to the shabby old office; it did not conform, certainly, to the new notions of efficiency, but it was a workshop hallowed by memories. As a tiny lad he had been carried up its narrow stairs in his mother's arms, and on circus days had been held, piping excitedly, on its dusty window ledge, to watch the clowns and elephants pass.

"I believe that's what I'm doing here all the time, Em," he remembered hearing his father say. And at the time he had envied his father the inestimable privilege. Later had come the days when, stirred by the moon-sickness of early youth, he had brought his musings and bewilderments to the dry tranquillity of the office, where, like the boy, the man too so often sat dreaming. He was sure now that those hours had not been wasted.

Early in June he received a letter from his old roommate, Tapley, urging him to come to Bloomington for the Commencement exercises and class reunion.

"Lots of things have happened since we were freshmen," Tapley wrote, "hut nothing that ought to make you forget the Board Walk and the Chimes. I've got only one arm now, but I'll be there. I'm still able to talk---and even if none of the old gang shows up, you and I can still concoct a plan to save the world."

John wired acceptance. The visit itself would he pleasant; he wanted to consult the Law Faculty regarding his prospects; and---Mattie lived in Indianapolis. He smiled to himself a bit grimly, as he realized which consideration carried the most weight.

He had not yet adjusted himself to the new rôle he saw himself forced to play; his old dominance over the girl's heart had been too flatteringly complete. But he had progressed to the point where he could view his shattered reign with a certain bleak amusement.

"You are now to learn the classic meaning of suitor, old top," he growled as he sealed the letter to Mattie. He had asked her to meet him at the Claypool for dinner, and had added a feeble suggestion of a theater afterward, hoping devoutly that she would veto the theater and give him the evening alone with her. His feelings rose to the explosive point when she replied promptly that she would be delighted to see him, but that he must forget about the dinner and join a small party which she and her roommate were giving at their apartment.

"Isn't it a coincidence that I should be entertaining on that very evening!" she had added maliciously.

"Yes, isn't it!" he muttered, glaring at the offending postscript. "Damn strange! Well, the small party will contain one member who'll be ready to shoot, if his present mood holds over."

He 'phoned her from the station, when he arrived late in the afternoon.

"What kind of party is this to be?"

Her voice came over the wire cool and tantalizing:

"Why, a nice party of course! Don't sound so rough."

He repressed the impulse to swear.

"I know that! But formal or informal? Shall I wear evening clothes?"

"Oh, very informal. Come just as you are."

So he rushed to the hotel, changed into his dress clothes, and traveled by trolley and taxi to Mattie's rooms, only to find that she had reversed the ancient formula. The party was informal.

Mattie's roommate, Sara Raeburn, was a small, jolly girl, with a hint of Scotch shrewdness behind her prankish smile and in her china-blue eyes. She shook John's hand mannishly and grinned.

"Doubting Thomas! Didn't I hear Mattie tell you this was to be informal? How stiff you must feel!"

"Well, you know, Miss Raeburn, I've grown so suspicious of women. Effect of---"

"Effect of gay Paree, doubtless," she laughed.

"Doubtless," he responded, glancing at Mattie, who was waiting to present him to the other guests. Somehow, he would have preferred to find the roommate a serious, even a solemn, person.

A tall, dark-eyed girl, Miss Bancroft . . . . A nervous, foreign-looking young lieutenant, anticlimactically named Smith . . . . And a Dr. Farman.

Malleson, whose sensibilities were belligerently acute, singled out the Doctor as the proper object for his resentment. The man's age seemed indeterminate; his crisp hair was gray at the temples, but his face had a youthful, assured vigor which went well with his quizzical smile and his self-confident, surgeon's hands. In his determination to be displeased, Malleson imagined that Metric showed a delicate deference toward Dr. Farman which seemed at the same time to admit him into a special intimacy. Yet he felt the charm of the man. The Doctor chatted of things trivial and serious with the same unobtrusive humor, yielded a point here, gracefully turned an argument there, and imperceptibly gathered to himself that subtle allegiance which a good talker wins even from unwilling listeners. Each observation seemed tagged with the lazy, unspoken query, "You think so, don't you? Isn't it really very simple?"

The dark-skinned young lieutenant, seated beside Sara on the sofa, occasionally interjected a staccato comment, smoked cigarettes insatiably and constantly flicked the ashes on the floor.

"Don't do that, Pete!" Sara protested, slapping his hand. "We poor girls have to do our own cleaning, remember."

"Pardon," he muttered, and a moment later repeated his offense.

Malleson had set him down as one of those sharp, spoiled young medical officers who managed to combine a tremendous amount of skilful work in the hospital with an impressive sum of dissipation outside. He was surprised to learn that Smith had only recently returned from France, where he had filled anything but pleasant berths in the advance operating stations along several sectors of the American front. It was plain from his manner that he disagreed with much of Dr. Farman's suave discourse, but, like the others, found the older man hard to oppose.

As was inevitable, the conversation had drifted to postwar psychoses.

"Of course you're changed," remarked the Doctor, seeming to exclude himself, "but it's a salutary thing. What the war has done for young Americans in two years their ordinary experience might have failed to do for them in a lifetime. Such is the safeguarded nature of our society---many of us never come of age."

"Why do you limit it to Americans?" asked Mattie.

"Because, my dear, chronic juvenility is our national trait. It is for a time charming; then it becomes---boresome. The war, as a continentalizing agency, has been unsurpassed." His mild eyes played over Mattie's serious face with indulgent amusement.

"That's all right if you mean only morals---" began Smith vehemently.

"That's what he does mean," interrupted Miss Bancroft, "and specifically he means that American boys are at last discovering that American girls are first of all fine, warm animals, and then, perhaps, reasonably satisfactory fiancées and wives."

"Golly, how exciting!" cried Sara, fidgeting and punching the Lieutenant. "Do you find me a fine, warm animal, Pete ?"

"Get away," growled Smith. "Control yourself---you haven't the brains to . . ."

Malleson was watching Miss Bancroft. The bitterness in her voice struck him as strange. The girl's face, pale and rather full, betrayed a certain sullen voluptuousness which seemed emphasized by the indolent pose of her body. She had spoken scarcely at all during the evening, and John had thought her merely stupid. Now he began to wonder.

"How hard you are on the poor Continentals, Flora," murmured the Doctor. After all, is the theory entirely wrong? I take it that we, here, are all good biologists."

"Biology and sex be damned!" ejaculated Smith. "It's a question of minds, not of bodies. You can't know---you never got across. But I leave it to Mr. Malleson, here,---hasn't the war spoiled everything for you?" His impatient, nervous eyes turned upon John.

Reluctantly drawn into the conversation, Malleson responded indifferently.

"Hardly that. It has---"

The Lieutenant interrupted impetuously:

"Well, it has for me! I'll tell you just how the world looks. Once when I was a small kid I had a fish-pond in our back lot. Nearby was a patch of deep grass where frogs and toads could hide. One day when I went out to my pond I found a big boy there---a fellow that I hated. He had a sharp stick in his hand, and was torturing a toad with it. The toad was old and slow; the boy had it in a corner where it couldn't escape. I begged and threatened and bawled, but the fellow only laughed and kept on poking. The toad would try to push the stick away with its awkward, crooked arms. Finally when it was almost dead that poor, humble, ugly creature clasped its little hands in agony and raised them in a gesture as human as anything could be . . . Well---that's the world I see."

There was a moment's silence, broken by the caressing voice of the Doctor.

"And---er---the outcome? That's important, isn't it?"

The Lieutenant tossed his hands and snarled:

"Oh, the prayer did no good. The toad was killed."

"Exactly!" The Doctor laughed with apparent enjoyment. "See here, Smith, you must admit that your interpretation of your toad and of your world is somewhat emotional. And your bitterness is merely the wreck of expectations that were too high. Great Scott, man! Don't blame that on the war---blame it on your own incorrigible lust for illusion."

The Doctor laughed again, and for the first time Malleson wondered if the man was genuine. If so, why should he be spending his time among these children?---for children they must seem to him. Involuntarily John glanced about the group: Sara, with her giggling, vulgar prettiness; Smith, likable but futile in his scowling earnestness; the silent Flora, distrait and vaguely scornful; and Mattie . . . . Moved by a sudden impulse he turned on the Doctor.

"You laugh at war---changed minds," he said abruptly, "but how do you account for this very talk to-night? You are probably the only one among us who is past thirty years old. But are our notions the peace-time notions of people in their twenties? Without the war, could Lieutenant Smith there have found reason to think of the unbelievable cruelty that life can suffer? Or if he had conceived of it, would the rest of us be interested? I doubt it. We'd probably spend the evening talking of plays or books or clothes or eating places---or perhaps," he added with a smile, "of morals."

Farman smiled in turn, and waved his hand deprecatingly. As he was about to reply Flora spoke with unusual vehemence:

"That's true!---about the morals. And by morals we'd mean our own smirking little speculations upon the double standard and chastity and good name and all those things which, thank God! men, at least, don't worry about since the war!"

A flaring note of hysteria ran through the girl's voice; the white face was at once menacing and desperately unhappy.

"Hush, Flo!" warned Sara, suddenly serious. Flora pushed the soothing hand rudely away, and cast a queer, lost look about the group. She leaned back in the sofa in exaggerated pretense of indifference, and extended her arms along its back, flicking the Lieutenant's ear with her thumb and finger.

"I like honesty---and morality," she said in a hard, flat voice. "Oh, I just dote on morality! . . . ."

Sara suddenly jumped to her feet and cried gayly:

"Fight it out! I'm going to brew coffee. Mattie, you and gen'l'mun fren' come on and help."

While Sara was distributing the plates and napkins, John had a moment alone with Mattie in the tiny kitchen. She was manipulating the percolator. Her beautiful arms glimmered against the blackness of the stove; her deft fingers paused as he bent nearer.

"Mattie, who are these people?" he demanded. "What have they to do with you? They aren't . . ."

Before he could say more, Sara returned. He had no further opportunity for a word until he was taking his leave. Dr. Farman and Flora had departed; Smith was waiting for him at the elevator.

Mattie seemed tired and subdued. He held her hand a moment in both of his.

"I'll stop in to see you on my way back from Bloomington," he said gently. "Good night, dear."

Re released her hand and turned to go. Suddenly she clutched his sleeve and whispered:

"Yes, do---please do!"

He caught a glimpse of a small, weary face with lovely eyes---and the door closed softly.

"JOHN, old dear, we are aging," sighed Tapley. "Already the spring of youth has forsaken our steps and I, for one, wish we were heading for a guzzle of real liquor instead of trying to satisfy ourselves with unsubstantial things---such as the halo about yon little co-ed's face, for instance. Notice it, even under the mortar-board?"

Malleson chuckled.

"Your work with the Britishers has made you both a tank and a poet, Tap."

"And a cripple," added Tapley, grimly. "As one has-been to another I ask you, have I any right to ask a girl to marry me? It’s only in the last few weeks that I've learned to fasten my neck-tie." He glanced indifferently at his empty sleeve.

Have you got the girl?"

"The other's tanned face softened. He nodded; his voice was somber.

"For keeps---unless I play the martyr."

'Take her; take her without looking forward or back."

They walked slowly along the path that leads from Kirkwood Hall through the shady hollow past the Well House. The big trees spread their arms in indiscriminate blessing over the new-fledged graduates, with their sedate gowns and their incongruously young faces; over relaxed old grads, pathetically seeking the lost yesterdays; over an occasional hurrying professor, mild-eyed and apostolic in his unaccustomed garb of black, topped with flaunting scarlet or purple. The. Campus indulged in its annual interfusion of medievalism and comfortable commonplaceness; the chimes in the Student Building tower competed with the chugging of Fords; the classic façade of the Library rose above a frieze of fluffy summer dresses; the severe Stone Seat, gift of the Class of 'Umpty-Nine, supported fat men drinking lemonade; the drifting fragrance of lilacs mingled with the aroma of Prince Albert and Lucky Strike. The chatter of youth, keen for the onset; the poised reserve of the half-spent; the autumnal watching of sad old men and women---all became one, integrated for the moment at the powerful summons of place and time.

". . . . Oh, I'll make a place in the world!" . . . "Yes, I decided to drop business for a couple of days" . . . "Wylie Hall? Yes, I remember---but now my son talks more of the Board Walk" . . .

John and Tapley wandered about, visiting old haunts, meeting old friends, but more and more falling under the influence of that vague disappointment which is the price one pays for warming over enthusiasms that are past. It is a hopeless business: the cloth of gold runs thin and shoddy, the enchanted voices grow wearisome, the tumultuous music dies away down the wind.

Yet these are, after all, but the ephemera. And a recompense remains. Now, as never before, Malleson felt the deep, laborious heart of his college throbbing in hidden self-sacrifice; caught glimpses and echoes of her mystical devotion in the souls of the men and women who returned. They were his people---his by a tenuous bond, perhaps, a bond easy to forget, but adequate to hold while the Chimes sounded, or voices sang "Gloriana" under the Campus trees.

That evening he called on Snedden, his old instructor. The man seemed pathetically glad to see him, though for a time shy and self-effacing. The war had been hard for Snedden.

Rejected in his attempts to enlist, he had stifled his disappointment and gone stoically about his teaching, his fine and modest soul recoiling deeper beneath its sheltering crust.

He demanded John's whole story. An unceasing glow lighted his eyes as he listened; his blunt, resigned face lost its apathy and grew alert and expressive. There were tears in Snedden's eyes as Malleson told of his farewell to Kempton.

"I suppose you've heard nothing more from him?"

Malleson shook his head. "No, and I never expect to. I---I imagine Kempton is dead."

"And his poor little story unfinished," muttered Snedden.

"I wonder if he looked upon it with amusement at the last." Without waiting for a reply he banged his fist on the table and swore fiercely.

"Oh, the insensate stupidity of people! You, in France, saw murder, but we here saw what I sometimes think is worse---the boundless imbecility of the mob. The stultifying of our carefully nurtured civilization! Scratch it only the least bit, and what do you find? Mere animalism; crass, blind ignorance. . . You remember old Professor Muller of the German Department? Gentlest, most childlike soul that ever faced a class. Well, to all intents and purposes we killed him---he's broken for good. Of course German went out of the curriculum at once---Goethe and Heine became cronies of the Kaiser and bloody Hindenburg. So old Muller puttered about his flower garden, getting poorer and shabbier each day---almost afraid to look up when a neighbor passed. And only last term, at enrolment time, when all the other instructors were besieged by students signing up, I found old Müller sitting alone at his desk, patiently waiting for a single student to come to him. The door was wide open, and a jolly hullabaloo was going on in the hall. I stayed there most of the morning, and not one of those damn young upstarts did more than look in impudently, and pass on! I could see the knife twist in the old fellow's heart, but he wouldn't leave till the time was up. When the bell rang he collected his blank enrolment sheets and stuffed them away in his worn green bag. 'Business is not overwhelming with me, you see, Doctor,' he said humbly, as he pulled his rusty old coat about him and shambled out . . . . God! I could have bellowed with rage!"

In spite of the companionship and gaiety of Commencement day the recollection of Mattie's "party" haunted Malleson. On his way home from Snedden's rooms he found himself fretting over the affair. No one detail seemed worth serious thought, but the total effect had been annoying. He could not conceive of Mattie voluntarily choosing these people for close friends.

"Whether she agrees or not I ought to get her out of there," he told himself. Her last words had been encouraging. But this new independence, these refusals to take him seriously? Had the disillusioning tasks, the desensitized milieu of the hospital hardened and cheapened her? He would not believe it. Besides, he thought disgustedly, why should it necessarily be thought hard and cheap not to take him seriously? And all his ponderous logic went overboard, leaving only the plain, impatient desire to be near her.

The next day he consulted the shrewd old Dean of the Law School and got some unofficial but practical encouragement in his plan to prepare for the bar examinations at home; made a flying visit to the Chapter House, and caught the afternoon train for Indianapolis. He had intended to let Mattie know when to expect him, but, remembering the result of his former notification, he changed his mind. Another party was the last thing he desired.

He reached the apartment about eight-thirty, and after ringing the bell twice without response began to curse himself for a fool. Why had he not stopped to consider that she might be on duty at the hospital, or out with friends, or, even if at home, chaperoned by the bothersome Sara?

"I am far gone," he thought irritably.

But Mattie was at home. As he turned away after the third ring she opened the door and stood in the aperture, where the light from the hall played full upon her face. In that instant, while she recovered from her surprise, Malleson discerned a subtle transformation in her expression, like the instinctive raising of her guard. It was cold comfort now to realize that her new flippancy had been assumed; the assumption itself angered and hurt him. The pose was inexplicable and unworthy; and he was in no mood to meet it with meaningless by-play.

"Where's your roommate?" he inquired anxiously, as she led him to the little parlor.

Mattie looked over her shoulder. "Out for the evening. But you see we didn't know you were coming. I'll 'phone her at once." She moved toward the telephone.

With ludicrous suddenness he jumped to bar her way.

'For God's sake don't do it! I've been praying that she'd he dead. I want to see you . . . . Why, Mattie !"

He thrust out an arm to support her. She had swayed as if about to faint, and her face was dangerously white.

"What is it---what ... Tell me!"

"Why did you have to come to-night," she murmured piteously. "It---it isn't fair. . ."

Bewildered, he held her gently, trying to draw the meaning from her eyes, which were wide and full of pain.

She shook her head stubbornly, and he felt her body grow resistant to his grasp. The sense that her natural self was slipping away again and that he would have to deal with the false Mattie enraged him. He pulled her roughly to the sofa, released her, and sat down in a chair directly facing.

"See here !" he exclaimed hotly, "how can you talk about me being unfair? What's the reason for all this flummery? Ever since I got hack you've treated me like a dog. It was bad enough at home, but now I find you here, housed with a nonsensical little fool and intimate with God knows what sort of people, and all I can get out of you is mystery and head-shakings! If I hadn't known you since we were both kids I might suspect all kinds of things . . . "

She raised her head, but he went on impetuously:

"I don't give a hang about your companions . . ." her flickering smile aroused him further ". . . they can go to the devil for all of me, but you yourself must tell me what's the matter. Is it the war? My not writing enough? Something you've heard about me---or . . ." He stopped abruptly, recalling his recent brief interview with Mrs. Joyce. But no--- that whole business was too absurd . . . . Mattie was no child to be influenced into such senseless posturing.

"Mattie," he went on, gently now, "don't you know I love you--have loved you always, and want you for my own?"

Her eyelids fluttered and closed; her slim arms, extended along the back of the sofa, grew taut; she kept her face uplifted, as if scorning to hide. The expression was there for him to read, and against its troubled, mysterious negation his anger, his confidence, his selfishness died away. Silent and miserable, he watched her. The soft brown hair . . . the resolute little mouth . . . the thin, courageous, toiling hands. . .

A dreary sense of unreality came over him. The moment lost its identity, as his feelings flinched, sheered, and flowed back for relief into memories.

"Mattie," he said sadly, "do you remember the night long ago when I sneaked into your room after every one but us was asleep .... You loved me then. That was beautiful. Is it all gone now? Is there no sign of. . . "

'Don't," she whispered, so low he could scarcely hear.

"We were kids then," he added. Then, with sudden passion, "I wish to God I'd taken you then! I'd never have given you up . . . . "

She leaped to her feet and clutched his shoulders. "A sign---a sign! You want a sign? Well---wait!"

Her voice rose shrill, with a tortured, crazy gaiety.

"Just wait!"

She ran to the telephone in the hall. In stupid amazement, he listened.

"Hello-Sara? . . . This is Mattie . . . I called to tell you to stay with Flora and Ruth to-night . . . . Yes, I have to report at the hospital right away . . . What? . . . Oh some emergency, I suppose . . Need me to administer the anesthetic perhaps ... Yes . . . All right ... Good night.''

"Mattie!"

She eluded him and ran into the bedroom. "Just wait!" she called.

He could hear her hastily moving about.

"You wanted a sign, and talked about things that were beautiful long ago. Well, I remember, too! Wait only a little, and I'll be just as I was that night. Then you can see if you're still the same!"

Uncertain whether she was laughing or sobbing, he hesitated, then entered. She had slipped off her dress and was standing where the rose light from the boudoir-lamps played magically over sheer pink silk and tantalizing flesh. She raised both hands to her breast and wailed:

"I hadn't called you yet! Oh . . . ."

In Malleson's temples the blood throbbed; pity and tenderness and desire fought their devious and conflicting ways through his consciousness. The girl's unresistant body molded itself against him, shivering in his embrace. Her face, wet with tears, pressed to his coat; she was whispering, but he could not understand.

Gradually his grasp relaxed. Little by little passion surrendered, subsiding for the lack of that physical resistance on which it feeds. He kissed her mouth that was cold and tremulous.

"I love you, John---I love you," she murmured brokenly. "I'm frightened---hold me tight."

All trace of hostility had vanished; her will had become as listless as her body. Wearied by some stress whose nature he could not surmise, she rested in his arms.

After a little while he pulled the coverlet from the bed, wrapped it about her, and carried her like a crumpled child to the sofa.

"Now tell me, darling," he urged. "What's all this about?"

She stirred, and raised her tousled head. "First, do you accept my sign? Accept it and not think me bad or---or---despise me?"

"Very bad---just as bad as you were that other night," he answered. "And how about me? Am I not a very Sir Galahad?"

She smiled wanly, and touched his face.

"But don't give me too much credit," he added grimly, "I don't claim it. Something---some cold trouble, something that I think you are imagining, makes me the safe watchdog. You needn't worry."

She kissed him, with a little laugh that ended in a sob.

"Dear fool John, I don't worry. I ought to be ashamed, but just as on that other time, I'm not."

"Are you going to marry me?" he demanded, then added plaintively, "You've compromised me now, you know."

But she had grown serious. "I'll try to tell it all---some things that I myself don't properly understand. But you said trouble that I imagine. I don't imagine it---it's real. It's about Mother. I can't make you realize the long, terrifying ordeal I've gone through with her in the last year or so. You know that before you left she had become queer. She fought against letting me out of her sight. At times I couldn't believe she was my mother---awful things she said and threatened . . . When the war came I simply had to leave home; I'd have gone crazy if I'd stayed . . . "

"But I was out of the way, then, Mattie. I thought that . ."

"That didn't cure her, though it may have helped. I've listened to the wildest stories of her fears, and what is worse, her---hatred. Not just you---your father, too. Once she talked to me nearly all night, and I couldn't quiet her until I promised not to write to you---not even to think of you. And that night I got a clue to her poor twisted reasoning about your father. She railed about his selfishness and his atheism, but suddenly, from something she said, I caught the real reason. It was pitiful---pitiful Neither you nor I knew about it at the time, but it was your father who kept my father out of jail, and so gave him his chance to leave us for good. Mother must have been grateful when your father saved him, but as time went on, all that changed . . . I’ve heard somewhere that even sane people grow to hate the one who's done them a favor . . ."

"But, Mattie"---he interrupted.

"Wait!" she exclaimed, holding his hand in both of hers. "You didn't understand why I was so upset when you came to-night. I oughtn't to tell you---and if you hadn't caught me unawares . . . If I'd had a little more time---that's what I meant by unfair . . ."

"What happened? Tell me!"

The girl's face was white and drawn, but Malleson felt the rallying of her will. The nervous distraction which had brought her to his arms was yielding to her old, steady courage. Half in regret, half in admiration, he waited.

"Just this evening I had a letter from your mother," she said, at last, "the kindest letter. I won't show it to you now. But a terrible thing has happened. Somehow my mother discovered that you had left for Indianapolis. It meant only one thing to her---that you were coming to me. I don't know just what did occur . . . the letter softened it all. But even from it I learned that Mother had gone raving mad and had made an awful scene at your house. . ."

She clapped her hands over her eyes, and leaned forward, shuddering. Helpless and saddened, John awkwardly stroked her hair. Without looking up Mattie continued:

"Your mother wrote only because she was afraid of what might happen if I didn't come home at once . . . . So---you see. That's why I couldn't bear up . My poor little game was played. And I was so desperately miserable I didn't care what happened.''

"What will you do ?" he asked, in a low voice. "And what can I do to help?"

She caught her breath sharply. "Oh, my dear! That's the part I can't think about yet. Don't you see? The only thing that's plain is that I must go home and watch and care for her. I daren't leave her alone any more . . . It's fortunate I'm only a civilian, not under army orders."

In the depths of his pity and disappointment Malleson's selfishness rebelled and made its protest.

"But, Mattie, that may be for years. Think! You have your own life to lead--our life . . . ."

She faced him, her eyes pleading. "Don't say those things now---they're what I fight to keep myself from saying. I can't listen! . . . I know that many people would say that I'm wrong to sacrifice myself---my own life to live! Maybe they are right, but I'm not built that way. You know how Mother and 1 have been---only the two of us. To desert her now . . ."

"Do you expect me to give you up?" he asked, softly.

She turned in his arms, her body suddenly a flame, fierce and possessive.

"No !" she cried. "No-no-no! You are to hold me with all your might---always. I don't know how---but don't talk of the way now; there'll be a way. Only help me now by waiting a little . . ."

He kissed her gently, and by a valiant effort kept the desolation from his voice.

"Enough, sweetheart---I'll say no more about it to-night. Let's get practical. You must sleep. And to-morrow. . ." I suppose it won't do for us to go home together?"

"I---I'd rather not."

"Right."

She rose, pulled the coverlet about her, and stood looking down at him. "Poor lover!" she murmured, with a weary smile, "you have your troubles, don't you."

He got stiffly to his feet. With an arm about each other's waist they walked toward the hall.

"Will you need your watchdog for the rest of the night?" he asked. "And am I right in supposing you'd let him stay?"

'You're entirely right," she answered. "I love him, you know. But there's no need."

He held her close a moment, gazing solemnly into the still eyes. A curious elation sprang to life in him.

"I recognize you again at last," he said. "Good night, Mattie."

"Good night, John."

THE afternoon light lost its opulence at the window ledge, and settled in lusterless monochrome over the shabby furniture and the dust-covered tiers of books. August heat, spiritless and heavy, filled the office; the air droned with its own weariness.

John fidgeted in his chair, scowled, and finally laid the book down in disgust. For the tenth time within the hour he found himself reading and rereading a passage without catching the slightest hint of its meaning; his eyes did their part, while his attention drifted far from the text of Cooley on Torts.

The breathless heat added to his nervousness. There was a malignancy in its superabundance; a quality of deliberate and personal cruelty that irritated him. Yet all the while he realized that he was taking his own discomfort chiefly as an index to what might be the state of affairs in the shaded room three blocks up Michigan Street, where his father lay.

If this damned weather would only moderate, chances might improve; at least the breathing would be easier.

He picked up the 'phone, hesitated, and set it down again.

"It would only call her for nothing," he muttered. "Everything must be all right."

His mother had promised to let him know if the slightest turn for the worse appeared. She had literally driven him from the house three hours before , when his unaccountable and childish panic made him a nuisance and threatened to upset her own precarious calmness.

"You can't do anything, John. You're on your nerves' edge---I never saw you act so. He's getting along all right. But you've got to stay away for a little while. I'll 'phone you if necessary"

So John had undertaken to wait at the office as a measure of self-discipline. He was astounded at the shattering completeness of his lapse. When, the night before, that inhuman, clotted cry had sounded from his father's room his own throat had closed as if a wad of hot flannel had been thrust into it, and over all his body the skin twitched and crept---a horrible feeling, like the sensation of darting, ice-cold insects. Then he had heard his mother's quick step as she ran across the hall, heard the light-switch snap, and a single low exclamation. For what must have been only a moment, but seemed an hour, he had lain in a state of literal catalepsis; his will frantically commanding and his rigid body refusing to obey. To get up and go into his father's room---a desperate and overwhelming revulsion made that seem the one thing on earth which he could not do . . . Soon, however, he was helping his mother arrange hot compresses, while old Dr. Walters broke amyl nitrite pearls into a handkerchief.

The son tried to avoid meeting the eyes that stared up from the gray, swearing face. All his observation of suffering had given him no stoicism for this ordeal. Yet it was not from the image of pain he shrank so much as from the risk of seeing what he felt he would never be able to forget---the surrender of his father's arrogant self-sovereignty under a physical agony too great to be borne. During the war he had seen the thing happen frequently---visible disintegration of spirit, the tragic and pitiable collapse of all that differentiates the man from other animals whose flesh can be tortured. Never a pretty thing to watch, even in strangers---and here, quite unbearable. It seemed to John that his life-long conception of his father could not survive the sight of such a breakdown; the man's personal identity, in the strictest sense, was at stake.

Hours afterward, when the murderous grip of the pain had relaxed sufficiently to allow Harry Malleson the merciful sleep of exhaustion, John felt his own nerves giving way again. It was humiliating, childish, but he could not help it. Reason and will made no progress against the intolerable conviction that his father was dying. His whole being rose in fierce and blasphemous revolt, but whatever he could think of to do or say only increased his sense of helplessness.

Then Mattie had arrived, and assumed professional charge. Her impersonal composure, and his mother's steady resourcefulness shamed him. He was not sorry to leave the house, though his only alternative lay in a fatuous pretense of study. His distracted reading added nothing to his knowledge of the law, but the mere operation brought a certain relief, by endowing this day with a delusive similarity to those of the weeks just past.

They had been dull days, judged by externals, but not without their prosaic satisfactions. Since his night with Mattie at Indianapolis John had been doggedly cultivating a new faculty of patience---a faculty that at first had been as easy to grow as a third leg. It seemed that in all his life, up to this time, he had never needed patience. Circumstances had been pliable, permitting him alternatives or, if a deadlock threatened, help came from his family or from friends. Here, at last, in his involvement with Mattie, he knew he must only wait.

He saw her at such times and places as she could arrange without arousing her mother's suspicions. The girl's greatest fear was that some trivial happening would precipitate another maniacal onset such as had occurred at the Malleson home. She had never been able to learn the details of that scene. Her mother seemed to have forgotten it, and Emma, out of mistaken kindness, told her only enough to set her imagination working.

But for all the apparent equilibrium of their relationship John knew in his heart that the stability was false. The situation was unreasonable, unnatural, certain to change, if not through the consent of Mrs. Joyce, then through some ruthless act of his own, which as yet his loyalty to Mattie forbade him to think about.

So the summer had dragged along. He spent most of his time in the office, hard at work. At first the task had been repellent, but gradually he came to experience a kind of romantic, subdued enthusiasm for this pioneer method of study. It smacked of the past; of the days when aspiring young barristers dimmed their eyes over Blackstone in the offices of waning old practitioners; of the days when there was a good living in land disputes, and the circuit judge carried a hot brick among the blankets of his "cutter" as he drove over the snowy roads between county seats. Though this stern and venerable conception of the profession had been growing traditional even in Harry Malleson's prime, Harry's son liked to read traces of it in the out-of-date office equipment, sniff its musty bouquet in the worn calf of the Indiana Retorts. There was perhaps a subtle matter of loyalty here which he did not try to understand; it sufficed that the dingy rooms warmed to him as to one come into his own.

This affection was basic, but overlying it another motive had persisted. He had instinctively chosen the old law office as a fitting place to watch and wait---a kind of sanctuary of forlorn hope. For John Malleson's premonitions regarding his father had a sounder basis than mere uneasiness. Late in June he had gone to Dr. Walters and demanded the truth. And after a bit of circumlocution, natural to the old man who still saw his questioner as a little lad, Walters had told him.

"Angina pectoris---or plain old heart-trouble, if you please. It'll kill him sure; when, I don't know. It's a miracle that he's alive to-day---every weakness aggravated by smoking, coffee, late hours . . . . But look here, son!"---the Doctor shot out a hand and clutched John's coat---"don't you tell Emmy---not a word, unless you want two dead men instead of one. I've not forgotten the day, years ago, when your father, after one of his attacks, came into this office and made me swear to keep it from her. Your father's a strange man; you can rarely take him seriously, but God gave rue sense enough to that day. And when he said---'There are few things I care enough about to become melodramatic over, and my wife's one of them: if you tell her what ails me I'll shoot you dead'---well, boy, when he said that he meant it! Just remember that."

John had thought the words absurd until he realized that they were the expression not so much of fear as of a fine and unprofessional chivalry: to the Doctor, "Emmy" also was a youngster. Even now, when she must have long since guessed the diagnosis, Walters kept his promise. During the critical hours of the last night, when death had hovered without disguise over Harry Malleson, the faithful old fraud had spoken gruffly of "neuralgia" and the need for a general "toning up." The pretense was unethical, but somehow heroic; one and all about the bed knew they had passed beyond practical verity to that compassionate netherland of the emotions where only heart's ease mattered.

The sun sank, copper-hot and round, below the motionless maple trees; the yellow glare of the afternoon wavered and deepened to a garnet and purple glow along the west; gradually in the marvelous alchemy of the summer haze the imperial colors softened and interfused, yielding to a twilight which glimmered in mysterious banks and stretches of lavender. A subtle coolness, more like a cloud than a breeze, drifted up through the willows from the river.

Emma raised the shades which had been drawn all day, and tucked back the curtains of the sick-room. John, coming noiselessly to her side, stood so their arms touched. He could just see her features in the dusk; her face, though calm, masked the same superstitious dread that stirred in him. After a moment, as if feeling his thought, she said, in a tone too low to reach the bed:

"I hate to see the night come on. It always seems like the ebb-tide. I dread it---its length and its silence . . ."

He nodded, and pressed her arm.

"He’s better, Mother---you know that. And I'm here to help, now."

Even as he uttered them, he felt the wistful banality of the words. They were like the miniature boasts of a little boy volunteering to protect his mother from dangers big and scary.

A faint chink of dishes rose from the kitchen. Emma tiptoed to the bed, arranged the sheet, and after looking a moment at the still face, returned to the window.

"I'm going down to help Mattie," she whispered. "Do you want to stay? He's sleeping."

John nodded. The vague dread still affected him, but mingled with the revulsion was an obscure fascination; the hour possessed an insistency, an incomprehensible significance that urged him to remain.

As if purposely to mitigate the dark shadows of his anxiety by some symbolic gesture of reassurance, Emma left the door partly open, allowing the subdued light from the hall to enter. By an accidental arrangement of the broad, down-tilted mirror above the dresser the thin glow was reflected hack over the bed, so that the head of the sick man rested in a crepuscular illumination, like the phosphoric glimmer of swamp-fire. In this ghastly, unwholesome light every angle and furrow of the worn-out face was cast into grotesque emphasis.

John felt an icy current dart along his spine. His father's face was the face of a corpse, dead in the natural aspect, but ferociously, terrifyingly alive in its congealed energy of rejection and contempt. The trick of the shadows gave the black line of the mouth a snarling, downward sweep; the long, loose eyelids seemed to have closed irrevocably and scornfully between the sentient spirit within and the outer world which it was weary of looking upon. The face was sinister, ruthless, and infinitely pitiful ; the face of a creature in some intolerable way broken and rendered useless, but not conquered.

Unable to endure this evil caricature, which yet seemed to betray the impress of fugitive truth, John sat down by the bedside and bent low over his father's face. With naive relief he saw that the spectral mask had vanished. Observed without the falsifying effects of distance and shadow, the countenance appeared tranquil, even gentle---the natural, living visage of Harry Malleson, save in one horrible respect. The difference John could not have described; it lay deeper than mere color or line or feature---the subtle and irremediable depreciation which marks the failure of the passion for life. The very serenity of that sleep was bitter; it held the fathomless indifference of flesh that has been hurt so extravagantly that all feeling is gone.

Yet the son felt no doubt of his father's spirit; that, he was certain, had suffered no change. The question of living or dying is, perhaps, under certain circumstances a matter of deliberate choice, and the decision neither victory nor defeat, but merely an estimate of values. Yet, while the calculation must take place in the cloistered chambers of the soul, the verdict is sure to leak out and become only a process in physiology, for all to see.

Now, as so often before, the power of his father's spirit enveloped him, stirring in John depths of indifferentism which made all things incidental. Through a curious duality of feeling he could now steadily entertain the thought of his father's death, and at the same time weep at sight of the thin, dark hands relaxed upon the coverlet.

While his son sat lost in musing, Harry Malleson had awakened. Their eyes met in the half-light, the son's startled and bashful, the father's dimly quizzical.

"Dad . . . "

"Yes, boy . . .Here I lie. . ."

John's hand clasped over the cold fingers that came to meet it. The man's eyes closed again, but not in sleep. During the silent minutes that passed, John felt the sealing of a compact not to be trivialized by words. Motionless, his body held in a queer rigidity, he waited.

When Malleson opened his eyes again John knew the melancholy little ceremony was finished.

At nine o'clock the Doctor came and found his patient blandly impervious to all orders regarding rest and quiet. Malleson sat propped against pillows, drinking broth.

"I've slept all day, Walters. What more do you ask?"

The Doctor snarled something unintelligible, and added pleadingly:

"I ask one thing---you God damned fool. Don't smoke a cigar. If you do your heart'll turn its last somersault before morning . . . . Promise!"

There was something so ludicrous in the old man's earnestness, and in the prayer itself, that John, in spite of his anxiety, found himself laughing. By one of those incalculable shifts in tension that sometimes occur at critical or tragic moments the entire situation seemed to lapse into bizarre and outrageous comedy. His father, gaunt and sardonic as a gargoyle, livid and grinning, against the pillow, the old fashioned nightshirt low about his corded neck; the grizzled old Doctor, heartbroken, disgusted and profane; little Mr. Reynolds, bug-eyed and futile, balancing on a tiny chair, clutching his fat knees in the stress of his effort to think of something to say; Dr. Thompson, reared to his unimpressive height in the middle of the room, his incorrigible pomposity pathetically deflated by his honest human affection for this stricken sinner. . .

These good friends had heard that Harry Malleson was dying. Their rush to his bedside had been momentarily halted by Emma, below stairs. But Malleson, hearing their voices, had overruled all opposition of his wife, Mattie and the Doctor, and had ordered them to come up.

"Great Scott, Emmy !" he protested, "why all this pother? If I'm dying, what's the difference? Let them in to see it. And if I'm not, there's no harm done."

Perhaps she was deceived; or perhaps she shared with John and Dr. Walters the unspoken conviction that the time for precaution had passed. At any rate the authority of the sick man lay over her as over all the others, and she obeyed. While the men assembled above, she and Mattie sat silent and weary, but alert, in the coolness of the veranda. Occasionally a neighbor, hesitating at the front steps, caught sight of the figures in the white porch chairs, and approached, to put a hushed inquiry. As the minutes passed, Emma's anxiety increased, but her will grew listless. She knew that her husband should rest, but the strain of the last sleepless night and the long hot day had left her resigned and distrait. And the Doctor was up there. .

It was perhaps just as well that Emma should miss that conversation---monologue, to speak more accurately. It could only have puzzled and troubled her. John, listening, felt the words go by like the accents of an unknown language; full of meaning, perhaps, but so alien to his conception of the appropriate that he made no special effort to understand. His father's strange volubility saddened him unaccountably. He knew it was not delirium; the mind behind the talk had never been surer or more ironic. Indeed, Malleson seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, and the discomfort of the others. His eyes burned with a demonic mockery as they shifted between the perplexed and helpless countenances of the minister and Mr. Reynolds.

"What would you give, Thompson," he queried, "for a glimpse---oh, a very temporary one---across the boundaries of life into those regions which ministers specialize in---heaven and hell? For a chance to corroborate the stories? And suppose you found nothing there: that'd be a solar plexus finish to your personal orthodoxy, wouldn't it! You'd be a pricked balloon, but you'd go on preaching---wouldn't he, Doc?"

"Damned if I know or care," growled Walters.

"The necessity for faith . . .and the brimstone hell is no longer pr----" began Thompson, but Malleson's voice ran on unheeding.

"And suppose I told you that I'd had such a glimpse, not so temporary, either---let's say a matter of half a dozen hours at least. Complete isolation from the visible world, you understand, but also complete use of all the senses. And suppose I told you that all I could see was a swart little dwarf, wrinkled little black man, very unobtrusive and considerate, who said nothing, but just sat, tailor-fashion, on the foot of the bed. Friendly little chap; whenever I'd waken after a doze, there he'd he, patiently waiting . . . Now, Thompson, wouldn't that strike you as a cursed poor return for all your trouble in getting through the barrier?"

Dr. Thompson, agitated and distressed, looked questioningly over at the physician. Walters caught the appeal, but responded quietly:

"No, it's not delirium. It's pure cussedness."

"Delirium?" sneered Malleson. "Of course it's not delirium. Delirium. . ." His voice shaded down to muttering which the others could not understand. For a time the room was silent; then Malleson spoke again, this time with a quality of studied, clinical impersonality:

"Gentlemen, make no mistake about this matter. I've been killed by just one thing---pain. A cheap, physical thing. It . . ."

"Dad!" The level certainty in his father's voice was more than John could endure. Every word seemed to cut the silence with inexorable truth.

But the sick man merely waved his hand and continued:

"Yes--pain. It's gone now, but that's of no consequence to the main point. I'm gone too---which also is not of much importance. And the . . ."

Again his son protested: "But, Dad, you're better. You're getting well. This morning you could scarcely talk."

His father answered slowly "Yes, boy, yes. But when I howled in the night and brought you and your mother running, did you think that's when the pain started? No! That's when it began to ease enough to let me make a noise. . . Doc here can explain. . ."

In a retrospective flash John saw again a crumpling, agonized figure in a moonlit clearing by the river. He remembered no sound had come. What the torture must be, with the heart clamped tight for minutes .

"It's not a matter for resentment, exactly," concluded Malleson, settling lower on the pillows. "It's merely curious and---shall we say, humiliating?---that we, Thompson, who you assert possess immortal souls, should be so misunderstood by our God that when it comes to finishing us He puts us out of the way with no more ceremony than we'd display in poisoning a cat."

Dr. Thompson rose and, squaring his plump shoulders, began agitatedly pacing up and down. The eyes of the man in the bed followed him amusedly. Mr. Reynolds sat paunchily motionless, enveloped in an aura of shocked and voiceless protest. John observed that old Walters was watching the face of his patient with alert professional interest. He wondered if the Doctor detected signs, good or bad, which the others, including himself, could not see. Could one read a pathological change, some foreboding of a crisis, in these malicious speculations? It was impossible to say; only John got the impression that Walters, despairing of any control over that wayward fancy, had resolved to let it run its course while he watched the bodily symptoms which at least he could understand. The son marveled at his father's strength; the voice was controlled and clear; the features, pale to ghastliness, yet had none of that vague blurring so often present after severe suffering.

The room had become silent again, but the stillness was charged with expectancy. The hands of the sick man, and the thin, hairy wrists, moved restlessly over the white coverlet; his eyes, deep sunk and at last a little weary, still smoldered like banked fires. Finally, with an impatient gesture, he spoke abruptly:

"Enough of this Quaker meeting. Since the women aren't here there's no need to keep up the mummery. I'm as good s as dead---we all know that."

Mr. Reynolds made some inarticulate sound, and moved his fat hands helplessly.

"Is there---isn't there something you'd like me to read or say to you, Harry?" asked Dr. Thompson, timidly. All his accustomed mastery of ceremonial had failed him.

Malleson's voice showed a trace of new vigor:

"No, Thompson, don't do it. No sermons or prayers now. I love you, man, like a brother, and God knows you've preached me to sleep many a time. But not to-night. Let's not waste wind with babbling that neither of us understands."

The minister bowed his head sadly. "So be it. I fear for you. . ."

"Fear away---and pray, if you must, but not out loud. . . And you, Reynolds: something tells me that you'll insist upon having several lodges march in full regalia at my funeral---the Masons, probably, and the Elks, and the Moose and God knows what else, with all their attendant fuglemen. . . Reynolds, I can see it in your face! Promise me, as a last favor . . . ."

But Mr. Reynolds, overcome, could not reply. Openly weeping, he waddled over to the chair by the window, and plumped down with his back to the bed.

When the minister and Mr. Reynolds had gone, Dr. Walters sat scowling a moment, then fiercely struck his hand against his thigh, rose and stood over Malleson. John could detect the struggle of love against professional condemnation in the old man's voice as he delivered his ultimatum:

"Harry, what I'm telling you is queer doctrine, but, so help me God, it's true! That stroke last night came within an ace of killing you. But it didn't---quite. Physiologically, now, there's no reason why you shouldn't recover . . ."

"And wait for the next one, eh? I . . ."

"Physiologically, I say. There I stop. And there's where you can begin . . . . You know what I mean." The old man's voice broke; he turned away and, fiercely jamming his hat over his ears, thundered out. John heard him speak gruffly to Emma, on the stairs:

"He's all right. Ready to sleep. I'll be here in the morning. 'Night, Emmy."

"Here comes Mother, Dad," said John, in a low voice. "I---I guess I'll go down for . .

Malleson smiled at him quizzically, and muttered, "That's right, boy. Get out. . . . We're going to talk about things that happened long ago---long before you were born . . ."

In spite of the fair promise of the sunset the morning broke cloudy and stifling, with intermittent gushes of rain. Descending the stairs softly, just after daybreak, John found Mattie hanging her dripping raincoat over the back of a porch-chair. There was a freshness about her face and hair which he felt must come from some fine inner determination, for she certainly had had no more than three hours' sleep. It had been well on toward morning when she had consented to go home.

John nodded to her questioning look. "All right, so far as we can say. He's still sleeping quietly."

"Where's your mother, John?"

"Lying down for a hit of a snooze. She wouldn't rest till the light began to come."

Together they entered the house.

"I suppose you know how much dearer you grow, day by day," he said quietly. Her arm slipped with gentle pressure about his waist, but she did not reply. Her face was grave and thoughtful.

"What is it, Mattie?"

She hesitated an instant, then looked up.

"We oughtn't to think of ourselves till your father is out of danger," she answered slowly, "but I can't help telling you this. Last night when I went home I found Mother still up. She was worrying, and blaming herself. Her crazy resentment seemed to have almost died out. But she didn't talk much of your father. She seemed to be pitying your mother---kept repeating that 'the blow had fallen at last,' and that she must do something to help. When I spoke of you she looked up suddenly, then down again, and I heard her say, half to herself, 'She'll be alone then, too---mothers are always left alone.' She didn't seem angry at mention of your name, as---as she has up until now. So . . . oh, we oughtn't to think of it, but I can't help it---our own hopes, I mean . . ."

Three hours later Emma, hearing a noise in the kitchen, came down from the sick-room and found Mrs. Joyce furiously at work, scouring dishes and pans which had not been used, and were already obviously clean. The woman put into the useless task a strange, penitential fury. For a moment Mrs. Malleson watched her in silent amazement, then stepped closer:

"Why, Mrs. Joyce, what are you doing! That isn't necessary, you know. We . . ."

Mattie's mother paused only long enough to cast her a glance in which a curious mad shrewdness seemed blended with compassion. Resuming her senseless scouring, she spoke in a muffled voice over her shoulder:

"You'll need help just at first, my dear, now that he's gone. I know how it is. I'll stay and . . ."

"But he's not gone! He's . .

Emma's face grew cold and white; she felt the blood recede, as an irrational and deadly fear crept over her. The bunchy, shapeless figure of the old woman suddenly assumed the symbolism of ponderous and inexorable menace, impossible to combat or dislodge. Breathless and trembling, she withdrew, pulling the door shut after her. As far as the upstairs hall the sound of the pans followed her.

Throughout the day rain fell intermittently, varied by periods of windless calm. The doctor came and went, pronouncing his patient better; Emma, Mattie and John, by turns or all together, sat in the room upstairs, talking and laughing with the convalescent. All day long Mrs. Joyce haunted the kitchen and the rooms of the first floor, puttering about with endless and futile cleaning.

The evening drew on, with a wild, spangled sunset that blotted at its close into a lusterless black; the tired watchers, at last satisfied that the danger was past, yielded to the command of their charge, and slept. And some time in the night Harry Malleson died, as he would doubtless have chosen, alone.

When, in the somber stillness of the parlor, Dr. Thompson intoned by careful rote---"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"---the beautiful words tore into John's heart and twisted like poisonous barbs. A maniacal and blasphemous impulse seized him.

"I'll damn well tell you where it is---your sting and your victory!"

For an awful instant he thought he had said it. But the earnest voice of the minister ran on; the flower-banked coffin again became clear before his eyes, and he felt the steady pressure of his mother's hand on his. The ancient, grief-winged query echoed in his consciousness like a forlorn watchword, opening hitherto unimagined abysses of loss and loneliness. For a passionate moment he became isolated with the dead; forgetting those about him, he drifted on a strange tide toward a futurity into which the past paradoxically blended---a mirage of life, where his father still bore him company. Gradually reality returned; his mother breathed gently beside him, small and heroic in her black veil.

Arm in arm they sat in the carriage, silent during the slow progress to Riverview Cemetery; arm in arm, stood by the grave near the water, watching the coffin sink from sight.

At once welded and divided by his going, mother and son saw Harry Malleson return to the river.

THE mildness of May was again in the air---that brief and delicate mood of respite which comes over northern Indiana when the April rains have saturated the grass-roots and the summer heat has not yet burned the moisture from the evenings. As always at this season the low, broad veranda of the Malleson home was steeped in the fragrance of lilac and honeysuckle.

John and his mother sat for some time in a silence broken only by the occasional scratch of a match as he relighted his pipe. Though preceding evenings had been beautiful Emma had shunned the veranda. She felt instinctively that the courage which had upheld her through the muted weeks since her husband's death would break on the memories that lurked in the shadows of the old porch. To sit there, with hands idle and mind free to range from the thousand and one household tasks which she had created to keep herself from thinking. . . . To know that in the dark she might let the desolation appear on her face and nobody be the wiser . . . . But to-night she had found John there, and, dreading the emptiness of the house, had remained.

"I've been spying on you, John," she said at last. "Whenever you light your pipe."

"Old pipe---is going---back on me," he grumbled, between puffs, as the match flared and sank. "Stuffed up, I suppose."

Knowing the depths of her grief, he was uneasy except in banalities. At his father's death, some magic cord had snapped; he had drifted into one refuge and she into another, and the lines of communication were as yet but imperfectly established.

"But the spying only puzzles me," Emma went on. "In the flicker of the match you are two people. First your face is young, then presto! the light dims and the smoke comes up, and you look strange and scowling---and ages older." Emma's voice was thin and strained.

"Ah, yes," she thought, "the light dims, and the smoke comes up . . . ."

Again they sat in silence. The leaves of the maples wavered in the faint breeze; the arc-light on the corner threw its accustomed milky shimmer about the sturdy old catalpa; lovers strolled arm in arm, north on Michigan Street toward Leeper Park.

At last John knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose. Leaning over the back of his mother's chair he kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"I guess I'll stroll up the street a bit, Mother."

Involuntarily Emma caught her breath, and listened for her husband's voice. It was incredible that no chuckle or jest of his came, as of old, from the place at her side. In spite of reason she felt something almost demoniacal in this faithful reenactment of the past---so cruelly faithful save in the one respect upon which the joy or despair of her life seemed to depend. In the gloom her face drew into a bitter little smile. In self-tormenting mockery she answered her son with the old familiar admonition of his boyhood:

"Don't be too late, John . . . I'll be waiting."

John and Mattie were to be married in September. With the death of Harry Malleson, the mistrust of Mrs. Joyce for the dead man's son had dwindled as irrationally as it had come. She now made way for him in the porch-swing as of old, smiling her wandering, pathetic smile, and edging toward the door with profound and unconscious abnegation in every movement of her awkward, broken figure. As if by some recondite self-adjustment to what she now saw as inevitable, her shadowed mind had lost its malevolence and become benign. To Mattie the change was both relief and pain, such as one sometimes feels, half-guiltily, at observing a gesture of farewell.

Mattie was not in the swing when John approached, and on a sudden, obscure impulse he decided not to stop. He found himself reluctant to face an evening of conversation, even with the girl he was to marry. Some secret loyalty, deeper than his love, stronger than his desire for her arms, possessed him.

Walking slowly, he came to the bridge, but instead of crossing he turned left along the river, through the dimly lighted stretches of the park, out to Portage Avenue and on till he reached the Cemetery. Passing the high gates, and along the pebbled, moonlit avenue between the stark-white mausoleums, he came at length to the narrow path that led to his father's grave.

His mother's last words echoed in his ears; in his fancy Mattie too spoke, and the voices, blending, roused in him a kind of fear---a curious impulse to escape the generic and depersonalized sway of women who, in a more than literal sense, were to be envisioned as always and forever waiting. The shrinking was deeper but more indefinite than reason; some shrouded masculine instinct of reticence which turned the spirit in upon itself, or out toward a stern and hidden counterpart with which it could commune.

The moonlight lay tender and white over the willows. The night was silent, save for the murmur of the river as it crooned from its dark heart a mourning song. For a long time he sat by the grave, his head in his hands. He seemed to see a cycle closing; his boyhood, with its play and measureless laughter, floating into a nebulous distance his manhood gathering itself for the new beginning. A slow triumph, a kind of sorrowful arrogance stirred to life and warmed in his heart.

He gazed down at the softly gliding waters, and for the first time felt in them tenderness and mystery. The soul of his father became one with the soul of the river, drifting, drifting down, yet remaining always.

But. . .

"I'll be waiting."

Yes . . It was late . .

He rose, stretched his arms, and set out briskly on the long walk home.