The Goddess Abides

Part One

SHE HAD BEEN READING too long and by a light too dim. Now she closed the book and leaned back in her low chair. Through the glass wall of the house, where she lived alone, she gazed at the mountain. The sun was setting to the right, and its dying rays caught the snowy peak and suffused it in rose-red bloom. Below the peak the moving dots of color were the last skiers, gliding and twisting down the smooth white flanks until they were lost in the shadows of the dark forest at the mountain’s base. Soon they would be tramping into the lodge, they would stand before the great fireplace, their damp garments smoking in the heat, they would drink and talk and boast of their prowess, then they would go to their rooms and bathe and dress in their informal evening clothes. They would eat gargantuan dinners and sit before the fire again and sing and talk their ski talk until, already half asleep, they went at last to their beds. In the morning they would rise to repeat the day before.

And she, here in her house alone, must now prepare her own solitary dinner, a small matter of a lamb chop and a salad and some fruit, and then after an hour or so of music, she would go to bed in the long bedroom that was half study. But first she must light the evening fire.

She lingered, however, watching the white peat glow and fade into silver, then into ash and at last into the night sky, unless by grace of moonlight it appeared again as a ghost of beauty. Tonight the moon was late. She rose and drew the curtains across the glass. She lit the logs in the huge stone chimney piece — too big, too big, Arnold had said when she drew the design of their house.

“How will you ever lift the logs?” he had inquired.

“You will lift them,” she had replied with laughter and mischief.

He had not laughed. “I may not be here always,” he said.

It was his first announcement. Looking back, remembering, she realized that he knew he was doomed to the death that came ten months later, a cruel death with pain eased only by the heaviest sedatives and final unconsciousness. Yet he had not spoken to her of death for nearly six months, and then by saying that he hoped she would marry again. He was too old for her he had maintained through all the years of their marriage, and she had denied it as steadfastly.

“Young men don’t interest me,” she told him, at first lightly and then with doggedness, until he was gone.

Yes, she had insisted upon the fireplace, and it was true that the logs were too heavy. When Sam, the hired man, a Vermonter and a neighbor, did not come on Sundays, she made a blaze of sticks that she could manage. But on every other morning he came to lay the fire which she demanded summer and winter, for this huge room without a fire could at night return to a primordial cave and she become a lost animal in its shadows. Her day ended with the dying blaze of the fire but she lit another in her bedroom. She always slept before the lesser fire died.

She rose to prepare her dinner, aware of sudden hunger, for she had forgotten to eat at noon in her absorption in her book. As usual before she set the table she turned on the stereophonic music. When she knew that Arnold must die before the year was ended, she had made the house ready to live in alone.

“Bookshelves along this north wall, please, Sam,” she had ordered. “I’ll need many books.”

He had grumbled under his breath. “Dunno what you want so many books for — you only come here a couple of times a year.”

It was true. When Arnold lived they came to Vermont for a month in the summer and when the children were not yet grown, they came for Christmas and skiing. She had given up her skis when Arnold fell ill, not wanting to leave him. She had not begun to ski again — not yet. Perhaps she never would. Meanwhile she would live in the vast old house in Philadelphia, where she had been born, an only child, and where she and Arnold had lived since her parents died.

Sam had built the shelves here in the Vermont house to her specification and she had filled them with books which she had always wanted to read and had never had time for while Arnold lived. And music, of course, she revived in her life, now solitary, not only the music of the great, but her own musical talent, dormant after years of wifehood and motherhood and the daily business of being Arnold’s wife. She had opened the piano after his death and left it open always, invitation to practice and enjoy, and she found in the valley a retired German music master to give her lessons again. She had hungered, too, for languages, many languages, she wanted various tongues and so she had begun once more to study French — first French, she told herself, for her grandmother had been a Frenchwoman, and then Spanish and Italian and perhaps German. Out of the many occupations she provided for her life alone she might choose one and make it a profession, although Arnold had left her with enough money. She liked clothes and jewels, not for themselves, but as part of the woman she still wished to be. Who, she inquired of herself, was that woman and what was to be her profession?

The amplitude of music swelled and soared into the high beams.

“You’ll never get those beams hoisted to the roof,” Arnold had said.

They were cedars cut from the forest that surrounded the house on three sides. She had ordered them to be stripped of bark and left in the weather of sun and snow and rain until they had aged to silver gray.

“I’ll get them hoisted,” she had insisted, and so she had done, Sam and a contractor between them fashioning a mighty lever with rope and crane.

The house was her own design and there was no room in it for children. She had married young, had borne her children young, and she had been a good mother. She had seen her children through early babyhood, childhood and adolescence, a son, a daughter, and then into somewhat too early marriages. Now she thought of them as friends, apart from herself, man and woman with their own concerns. Indeed she drew apart from them, needing to discover whether her life had meaning beyond wifehood and motherhood. She had enjoyed both functions in her somewhat reserved fashion, but there was a time for everything, and the time had come for something more.

In spite of the music, in the midst of the Andante, she heard a strong knock on the door. She turned and through the glass door she saw the figure of a man in ski garb.

“You shouldn’t be there all alone,” her children had said. “The whole area is changing now that the mountain is being developed. All sorts of characters—”

She left the counter, which was as much as she needed of kitchen, although Arnold had prophesied that she would soon be tired of nothing but a counter.

“You’ll want to go back to your servants and the big house,” he had told her.

But she was glad to be free, at least for a while, of the oppressive presence of servants and what she wanted to eat was easily made at the counter in one corner of this huge room. She peered now through the glass door. The light of the lamp over the dining table shone upon a man’s face, a young face, the eyes dark and intense, the features strong. She opened the door.

“Come in,” she said.

He stamped the snow from his boots and set his skis and poles against the stone outer wall of the house. Then he came in.

“Well?” she asked.

He hesitated, smiled, his hand outstretched.

“I’m Jared Barnow,” he said, “and I’m not brash — only desperate.”

“Yes?”

“I’m told that you have the only empty room in the township, and I have no place to lay my head! I’d no idea the area would be so crowded. I’m alone, and I thought it wouldn’t be hard to find a place for a solitary man.”

His accent was good, he was mannerly, but—

“It would be most inconvenient, I’m afraid,” she said frankly.

He stood looking at her, waiting, his dark, intelligent eyes inquiring.

“I’ve never taken strangers into my house,” she said. And then upon an impulse of loneliness she went on. “Put off your things and have something to eat. Then—”

“Thank you.”

He took off his jacket and peeled off a rough sweater and she saw that he was slender, well above medium height but a graceful, compact figure, quick moving, his hair blond above the dark eyes.

“You’ll want to wash up,” she said. “That’s my husband’s room there, and his bath — was, I mean. He’s — not living.”

He went in without reply to this, and she put two more chops in the oven and set another place at the table.

…“I don’t get many holidays,” he was saying an hour later.

If he noticed that she had changed to her dark red wool dress, sleeveless but long to her ankles and high at the neck, he gave no sign. He was eating with concentrated zeal.

“You went to prep school,” she said.

He looked up. “How did you know?”

She smiled. “You don’t look like a depressed person, but you’ve had to eat in a hurry before others got the food. That means boys.”

“Might have been the army?”

“I think not. I have a son and I know.”

He laughed. “You’re right. Prep school. Then college. I finished that when I was twenty.”

She was accustomed to taciturn young men, but he was not so much taciturn as self-absorbed. A single-minded young man, she guessed, one with a purpose. He had fine hands, she noticed, well kept without being overtended, a masculine hand, the fingers strong and the palm capable. He looked young enough to be her son — not that she wanted more sons!

“What do you do?” she inquired.

He pushed aside his empty plate. “For a living or for fun?”

“Both.”

“I’m lucky,” he said. “What I want to do for a living is also fun.”

“And that is?”

“I don’t suppose you know anything about electronics?”

“I know the word. My father was a physicist.”

He woke instantly. “No! What was his name?”

“Mansfield. Raymond Mansfield.”

“Not the—”

“Yes.”

“I say!” He threw down his napkin. “Incredible luck! I stumble into a house and find the daughter of Raymond Mansfield!”

“But you’re too young ever to have met him.”

“I’ve studied his books. God, I wish he were alive! He’d know what I want to do.”

“What?”

He looked at her shrewdly, shyly. “How do I know you’ll understand?”

“I might.”

“Well, I’m an engineer, a sort of a superengineer, I suppose. But I — my real work is inventing. I have things I’ve invented.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well—” he looked at her and stopped abruptly. “They wouldn’t interest you. They wouldn’t interest any woman.”

“I might be different.”

“Yes, I suppose—”

He got up and went to the chimney piece and stood looking into its blazing cavern.

She called to him. “Would you mind putting on a log? The woodbox is there in the corner.”

“That a woodbox? I thought it was a cabinet sort of thing.”

“You’re laughing at me. Well, I grant you, I’ve a mania for bigness.”

He was rummaging for a log, choosing the longest, the heaviest, and he threw it into the fire. A fountain of sparks flew up. “You’re not so big yourself. Who plays the piano?”

“I do.”

“So do I.”

He sat down and without effort played a movement from a Beethoven sonata. Halfway between table and sink, her hands fall of dishes, she listened and was amazed. A musician, a real one, playing as she had not heard a man play since her father died, playing with precision, elegance and depth! No one really understood music unless he was a scientist, her father had declared, and not just a scientist, either, oh, no, only the real ones, the theoreticians, whose language was mathematics. She had not understood mathematics until he had explained to her that it was the symbolic language of relationships. “And relationships,” he had told her, “contain the essential meaning of life.”

She set the dishes down softly and tiptoed to a chair. He played on until the last movement before the finale. Then he stopped abruptly and turned to face her. “I don’t play the finale. It doesn’t belong. Beethoven never knew how to stop the great music, and he just subsides or ends with a sudden bang. He had to finish somehow.”

She laughed. “You’re a blasphemer, but you’re right. It’s what I’ve often thought and never dared to say.”

He was walking around the room restlessly and went to the window. The edge of the full moon was shining over the horizon.

“Do you live here all the year round?”

“No — just since my husband’s death.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“No children?”

“Both married and living their own lives — thank God!”

“You don’t like children?”

“I love them, but any self-respecting woman likes to see her children on their own. Then she knows she’s done a good job.”

“You don’t look — motherly.”

She evaded this. “Is your own mother living?”

“No, nor my father. I don’t remember them. In fact, I never knew them.” He stopped by the piano and repeated a few bars of the sonata, then stopped again and went over to the fire and stood gazing into the high flames leaping into the chimney. “I grew up with an uncle, an old bachelor who always seems surprised to see me in his house, however long I’m there.”

“What is he?”

“Retired — ever since I can remember. Kind and confused — writes books about classical French poetry that no one publishes, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s been awfully good to me, especially since he’s never had the least idea of what I busy myself about. My mother was his sister.”

He murmured this abstractedly, as though he were talking about someone else.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“No, but I think about it — now and then.”

“The girl is chosen?”

“Well, she’s chosen me, you might say.”

She laughed again. Living alone, laughter was what she missed. “Is that what they do nowadays?”

“A good thing,” he said, unsmiling. “I doubt I’ll have time to choose for myself. My sort of work takes up the mind.”

“And the heart—”

He looked at his watch. “I say, do you mind — may I stay? I’ll get up early so as to have an early go at the mountain — if that doesn’t upset you? I can make my own breakfast. Shall I put on another log?”

“No,” she said, “and I get up early, too.”

They parted then with nod and smile, and when she had cleared the table and washed the dishes she sat down at the piano and played softly while the fire died to ash.

…And then later, when she had finished her ritual of bath and brushing her long fair hair, when she was lying in the big bed in her own room, the fire blazing upon the high stone hearth, she fulfilled the end of each day, she lifted the telephone from its place and dialed seven digits and she listened until she heard the gentle old voice.

“Is that you, my darling?” the voice inquired.

“It is I,” she said.

“I have been waiting for you — a long evening, waiting.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. Henry had an errand in the village. I have been rereading my essay on myth in the crowd mind. The boundary between myth and reality is very delicate. Myth is the dream, the hope, the faith, the vision of possibility which grows naturally into planning, and so possibility is very close indeed to reality, may indeed at any moment become reality, and that is its ineffable magic, its luring charm. Do I bore you, my love? I am company only for myself, I am afraid, and yet you will never know what you supply me now — King David and his Bathsheba — I doubt they talked, you know! I imagine it was just the warmth of her young flesh against his — no talk needed. Lacking that, I talk—”

He broke into mild laughter, and she laughed with him.

“You are laughing at me?” he inquired. “I don’t mind, dear child — so that I make you laugh.”

“I am not laughing at you,” she told him. “I am thinking how glad I shall be when I get so old that I, too, can say anything I like. Have you taken your medicine today?”

“Oh, yes — Henry sees to that.”

“Where are you now?”

“If you must know, you inquisitive female, I am just out of my bath, wrapped in a large towel, dripping water on the floor.”

“Oh, Edwin,” she protested. “You are incorrigible. Yes, you are, talking to me while you catch cold! Put on your pajamas at once and get into bed. Are you wearing your flannel, ones?”

“Yes, darling. Henry put the summer ones away. He put them away the first day of October as usual, and then it turned warm — Indian summer, you know — but be wouldn’t get them out again, so I had to roast until snow fell. But you know all that. I hope you’ve forgotten tomorrow is my birthday?”

“I’ve forgotten how old you are, if that’s what you mean!”

“Seventy-six, my dear love, and I still feel a stir in my central parts when I hear your voice.”

“Edwin!”

“You reproach me?”

“Good night, good night, and I repeat — you’re incorrigible!”

“God’s blessing on you, sweetheart! When are you coming to see me?”

“Soon — very soon.”

She put the receiver into its place again and lay back on her pillows, smiling. How could she explain to anyone the comfort of knowing that she was the center of an old philosopher’s amiable heart? That was what she had missed most when Arnold died. She had ceased to be first with anyone, meaning of course, heterosexual that she was, first with any man. Though Edwin Steadley stirred no central part of her, she allowed him to love her, although of what love was compounded at such an age, she did not know. Perhaps it was only a formula, words to which he had been so long accustomed in the thirty years of happy marriage with Eloise, his wife, dead these twenty-four years, that they had become habit. How long ago could be measured in the terms of her own life, for when Eloise died she had been a girl of eighteen, teasing her mother to let her cut her long hair. She had thought of Edwin as an old man even then, although in reality he had been at the height of his career as a famous philosopher, and she had been his pupil in college.

Handsome and virile she had thought him, in spite of his age, and filled with an élan that she had not associated with philosophy until she knew him. How much of this was due to Eloise it would be hard to guess, but a great deal, doubtless, for she had been articulate and ardent, and madly in love with him, developing, no doubt, every element of sex in him. She guessed at that, for Arnold had developed her in the same way, drawing her out of virgin shyness and leading her to her fullest womanhood, until since his death she had felt the currents of her sexuality stopped and protesting. Yet the original delicacy held. She was still to be sought and not to do the seeking.

The fire was dying here in her bedroom, too, and she fell asleep.

Jared Barnow was gone and so swiftly had the time passed that she could not believe the clock said nine o’clock in the morning. They had talked over the breakfast table until suddenly the clock in the corner had chimed the hour and he had leaped to his feet.

“My God, I came to ski! You make me forget. Here, I’ll help with the dishes.”

“No, no—”

“But, of course—”

In the end she had persuaded him and had seen him off, and then had remembered and had called him. “Come back if you don’t find something nearer to the slopes!”

“Thanks!” he had shouted.

She watched him tramp down the hill to the valley road which in turn would lead him up to the ski area on the mountain opposite her window. When he was out of sight in the intervening forest, she turned to the room again. It was strangely empty, a room too huge, as Arnold had always told her.

“It’s a room to get lost in,” he had said one evening when the fire was casting shadows in the distant corners, and suddenly now although the sun was shining through the windows, she felt lost.

She finished the dishes, and then went into the room that had been Arnold’s but now was her guest room. The bed was neatly made, and everything in order. Then he must have planned to come back again? Otherwise he would have left the bed unmade. Or if he had made the bed he would have put aside the sheets. Why did she keep thinking about him? She would call Edwin and tell him about the guest and so free herself, perhaps. This much she had learned about being alone, that she could mull over something and worry herself with it until she did nothing else.

“Although I shouldn’t use Edwin merely to ease myself,” she murmured, and went to the telephone and took off the receiver and dialed. Ten o’clock? He would be at his desk, writing his memoirs, the history of a long and distinguished life, spent among famous men of letters and learning.

She heard his voice on the telephone at her ear. “Yes? Who is it?”

“It’s I.”

“Oh, my darling — how wonderful to hear from you at the beginning of day!”

“I shouldn’t be interrupting your work but I need to hear your voice. The house seems empty.”

“It makes me happy that you need me.”

No, it is not fair of me, she thought, to use him because I miss someone else, and besides it is impossible that I miss someone I met only yesterday and that someone a man young enough to be my son. It is only that I cannot accustom myself to living alone — not yet.

“When are you coming to see me?” the voice inquired over the telephone.

It had been agreed long ago, without words, that when they met it was she who must go to him. The hazards of traveling were too much for him now, but beyond that fact was her own inclination to keep this house jealously for herself. Even her children she did not welcome here, preferring to put them up in the guest house nearby. This house was hers, inviolate now that Arnold was gone. There were times which she would not acknowledge that even he had sometimes been an intruder, But she had never known herself as she really was until now when she was alone.

Before her widowhood she had been a daughter and sister, wife and mother, dividing herself perforce, though willingly, for she had enjoyed each relationship and treasured her memories. Now she was living with herself and by herself as though she were a stranger, discovering new likes and dislikes, new abilities. Books, for example — she had thought of books as diversion and amusement. Now she knew they were communication between minds, her own and others, living and dead. Such communication was the source of learning and she had a thirst for learning, reviving after the busy years of her married life.

“I have a guest,” she said now.

“Who is it?”

She heard an echo of jealousy in Edwin’s voice, and was amused.

“You’re jealous!”

“Of course I am!”

“But that’s absurd.”

“No, only natural. I’m in love with you.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“No, only reality. Let me tell you an amazing truth about the human being. You’re too young to know, but I know. The ability to love is the secret of life. So long as one can love, really love, another human being, death waits afar off. It is only when the capacity to love ceases to exist that death follows soon. I thank you, my darling, for letting me love you. It keeps death from my door.”

She listened as she always listened to him, accepting and believing. He was still teacher and she was still pupil. “You make too much of me,” she said, “and that is very sweet.”

“So,” he continued, “who is your guest?”

She told him briefly, almost indifferently, ending with the words, “And probably he won’t be back. The weekend rush is over today and he’ll find another place to stay.”

“I hope so,” he replied. “I don’t like your being alone in the house with a stranger. One never knows, these days — and you’re a very beautiful woman.”

Arnold had not been one to praise her looks and she had never been sure of her own beauty. He had been jealous, yes, but without cause, and since he was possessive it occurred to her now that perhaps she had always been beautiful, and he had not dared to tell her so.

“It’s only what you think, Edwin,” she said, “but still I like to hear it, being in my secret heart a vain woman.”

“You’ve never thought of yourself. I’ve always known you were beautiful. I remember the first time I saw you. It was a September day, and your head, true red gold, was shining there among the browns and blacks and blondes of the freshmen. I marked you then, without any thought of course that one day you would become my life. I saw your eyes, clear with intelligence. That’s my prize pupil, I thought — as you were. And I began then to scheme how I could keep you in my department, and failed because that rascal, Arnold Chardman, married you too early! I almost wept the day you came to tell me. Remember?”

She did remember. It was true she had married too young, but she had been so joyful that she had not noticed the professor’s eyes, only his silence.

“Will you not wish me well?” she had asked.

She remembered the long pause before he answered. “I wish you to be happy. You will find your happiness in different ways. Just now you are sure it is in marriage. Well, perhaps so. But the time will come when it will be in something else.”

“So long as it is not in someone else,” she had said gaily.

“Do not limit happiness,” he had said gravely. “One takes it where one finds it.”

They had not met again for years and she forgot him. Then one day, soon after Arnold had died, among the many letters of condolence she found his letter. He wrote as though they had parted only yesterday.

“Do you remember,” he had written, “do you remember what I said about happiness? One happiness has passed, but hold yourself ready for the next, whatever it is. If you do not see it on the horizon, then you must create it where you are. So long as you live you may find happiness if you search for it, or create it for yourself. Perhaps the search itself is happiness.”

It had been a long letter, speaking only of herself and the future, of life and not of death. Yet he, too, had known death, ho reminded her, for Eloise, his wife, had died many years before. Now he lived alone in their house in the country, which had been their summer home, and he was writing books.

She had replied with a sad short letter, merely saying that his had been the most comforting words she had received, “but there is no happiness on the horizon,” she had told him, “and I find no creative spark within me.”

Then he had sent her a telegram, inviting her to visit him, and she had gone, only to find him the center of a houseful of grown children and grandchildren, temporary visitors, and among whom she had sat as a guest, vaguely welcome, but of no importance. It was he who had made her important, singling her out as his companion, to remain at his side when the others went off on jaunts together. Alone in the vast sprawling family house, he had talked and she had listened. He was writing a book on immortality, and he talked of what he wrote. She had listened with concentrated interest, for Arnold had not believed in life beyond death. In the midst of her anguish as he lay dying, she had admired his firm courage.

“I am very near the end,” he had told her. “And it is the end, my dear. There remains only my gratitude — to you. For your infinite variety — my thanks!”

Those were his last coherent words, for he had been overcome with pain, and in a daze of agony had died a few hours later. On her first night alone in the great house in Philadelphia which was now hers only, she had pondered his words. Was it true, could it be true, that nothing of him remained except the body buried in the churchyard where his ancestors lay? She had puzzled her way among such thoughts, unable to reach conclusion, equally unwilling to believe he was right, and yet compelled to fear that he was. She had no proof of immortality, but then he had had no proof against it, either. In this frame of mind she had been willing, and indeed eager, to hear what Edwin had to say.

“We human beings are the only creatures who are able to think of our own end, without doubt or faith.”

He had made this as a statement one day on her first visit. They sat on the terrace overlooking the distant mountains, and the housekeeper had brought them tea and small cakes and, setting the tray on the table between them, had gone away again. Alone with him, she had dared to disagree with him. Over her teacup she had shaken her head.

“You disagree?” he had asked, surprised.

“Even animals know their end and fear it,” she had replied. “See how wildly they try to escape death! They may not be able to reason or think, but they fight death. Have you ever seen a rabbit in the clutch of a dog’s jaws? Until its last breath it struggles against death. A fish, drawn out of water, will straggle to live. Animals fear death and if they fear, they know.”

He had listened, surprised and pleased. “Good thinking,” he had replied, “but don’t confuse instinct with consciousness.”

She had pondered this and then had inquired, “What is the difference between animal and human being?”

“Consciousness of self,” he had said. “A human being declares himself because he knows his own being. Animals? No. They don’t separate themselves from the cosmos.”

They had come strangely close even on that first visit and, as time passed, had grown into mutual dependence each upon the other, although she recognized that what she felt for him was not love, only closeness. On his part it was frankly love, an old man’s love, the nature of which was not close to her. Whatever it was, love was sweet, and she clung to its persistence. He was wiser than she, and this, too, was sweet. She had never leaned on anyone, for Arnold, she had discerned early, would never be able to know her altogether. They were compatible, but she was the knowing one.

Edwin’s voice recalled her. “Are you still there, Edith?”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she replied quickly.

“Then you haven’t been listening!”

“Not quite,” she confessed.

“You’ve been dreaming!”

“Only thinking — about you and me.”

“Ah, then, I forgive you. And thank you! It’s not good for me to suffer jealousy, you know — at my age.”

“You needn’t. Now go back to your work, dear.”

She put up the receiver, turned to face the day, a bright sunlit day, the white slopes gay with darting figures, and she wasted it wantonly. A multitude of small tasks waited, a silver bowl to be polished and filled with fruit, a trip to the village store which she postponed so that she could sit by the window and gaze again at the mountainside, imagining which of the flying dots of color could be that of Jared Barnow. She had never known anyone named Jared and the strange name added to his attraction. Something new, someone new, had entered her house last night.

…When the sun had set and shadows crept over the mountain, leaving only the peak rose-red against the sky, she busied herself with the evening meal. For two? Or only herself? She would not set the table until she knew. Meanwhile she would prepare enough food — two small steaks, the larger one for him. Then suddenly she heard his footsteps, stamping off the snow, and he opened the door without knocking.

“I’m back,” he said.

“I was expecting you.”

She went toward him as she spoke and to her surprise and somewhat to her horror, she felt an impulse to put her arms about him. She restrained herself. To what absurdities could loneliness reduce her! She must be on guard. A new experience, this impulse, for until now she had only to be on guard against others, her own fastidiousness — coldness, Arnold had sometimes called it, when he was angry with her — until now had been her weapon. In her own being she had known she was not cold, withdrawn perhaps into a space which she had never shared with anyone, an inner space.

“I’m back, as you see,” he repeated.

“No luck in finding a room?”

“I didn’t try,” he said, unlacing his boots.

“I’m rather glad,” she said. “It makes me feel a part of life on the mountain.”

“You’ve never skied?”

“Oh, yes, I loved it when I was young.”

“It’s not too late, you know.”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“Nonsense! You look — about twenty-five, say!”

She laughed. “Add ten years and then another seven. I’m forty-two!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Never mention it again,” he commanded. He rose and went toward the door to the guest room. “I’ll just wash up a bit, brush my hair—”

“Everything is ready,” she said.

He paused. “You expected me?”

“I hoped.”

They exchanged a look and he went into the room and closed the door. And she stood, uncertain. Should she change her dark green wool suit? But if she did, would he suspect her of some absurd coquetry? She decided not to change and was glad, half an hour later, for he sat down and began eating with self-assurance and in a silence that was almost ingratitude, she thought. He was only young, she decided, watching him — young and very hungry. It would be absurd to change into her long red dress — or the black one trimmed in silver, merely for this greedy boy.

“How long are you staying on the mountain?” she asked at last, to break the silence. No, she was ready for him to leave, her pride wounded, remembering the foolish impulse she had resisted.

“I must go back tomorrow,” he said. “I have a job in a laboratory. Well, it’s more than that. It’s an opportunity — a chance at last to invent, to discover — do something on my own, perhaps — Brinstead Electronics.”

“A fine firm,” she said.

“You know it?”

“My father was a sort of consultant.”

“I wish I’d known him!”

“He died long before you were old enough to know him.”

The words stung her heart with a sudden wounding of her selfhood. When he had been born she was already out of childhood, a girl quarreling with her patient mother over the length — or shortness — of skirts and defending her right to come home after midnight when she was out with Arnold.

“The whole world knew him,” he was saying.

“I suppose so.”

Why was it difficult to talk? She felt depressed and apart, almost hostile to him because he was so young. Yet last night the conversation had flowed between them, easily and with understanding. She lifted her head involuntarily and realized that she had done so because he was staring at her, his eyes very dark under his brows. When their eyes met he spoke abruptly.

“I like you. Not just because you’re beautiful, either. I’m used to that sort of thing. The girl I’m going with is pretty enough. But you have something—”

He broke off and she made herself laugh.

“Age — that’s all!”

He did not reply with laughter. Instead he spoke almost with irritation. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about age! I’m ashamed of being — foolishly young. I’ve always been too young for what I wanted to do — too young to go to college, too young for a job. I ran away when I was fifteen, just to pass the time until I was older. I finished college too young. I’ve always done everything too young.”

“Where did you run?”

“I traveled — loafed would be better — around the world for two years.”

“So now you’re—”

“Twenty-four.”

She stabbed herself again. “Tell me about your girl.”

He frowned and turned his head toward the window. Over the rim of the mountain a slim new moon hung suspended, a decoration in the sky.

“She’s not my girl exactly,” he replied, still irritably.

“Why not?”

He pushed his plate aside, rose and went to the window. There he stood gazing at the shadowed mountain and the hanging moon.

“I’m in a strange situation,” he said.

“Yes?” Her voice invited.

“I’m always too young for what I want to do, but I’m too old for — for girls.”

A moment of silence hung between them, as tenuous, as quivering, as the new moon, glimmering in the clouds now drifting above the mountain.

“I don’t quite know what you mean,” she said at last, her voice gentle.

“I don’t, either,” he said abruptly and came back to the table and sat down. “More coffee, please. What’s your name, by the way? Your first name—”

“Edith.”

“Edith,” he repeated. “Edith? I never knew anyone with that name. My mother had a silly name — Ariadne. Still, it’s rather sweet. As I said, I don’t remember her, but my uncle said she was a sweet person.”

“What happened to them?” she asked in the same gentle voice.

“They were killed in a motor accident when I was two. Yet I seem to remember someone like my mother, a soft pretty someone — but probably I don’t remember, really — just a dream, perhaps, or even pure imagination.”

“And there’s been no one to take her place?”

“No. My uncle never married. Didn’t I tell you? I suppose he has a mistress tucked away somewhere. We never discuss such matters.”

“No one has ever taken your mother’s place?”

“I’ve never looked for anyone. Mothers are irreplaceable, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” she said firmly, and then after a moment, “but the girl? Is she younger than you really?”

“Not so many years — but otherwise—” He shrugged slightly. “Yet she’s clever enough, intelligent, all that. But I’m too old for her. I’m too old for myself. I’m a burden even to myself.”

She laughed, “Oh, come now!”

He did not reply with laughter. “Yes, I am that. I’m interested in too many things, not people. So much I want to do! I’ve no time for — for marriage and so forth, and that’s what this girl wants.”

“Is she in love with you?”

“She says so.”

“And you?”

“I? When I’m with her, I’m normal enough to feel the stir, you know! But the old part of me knows better. ‘You’ll be bored with her.’ That’s what it tells me — am I mad?”

“No. Only wise.”

“I could do with less wisdom.”

“Don’t say that. It’s given to you as a tool for accomplishment.”

“Of what?”

“Of whatever it is that you want to accomplish.”

“To penetrate the secrets of the universe!”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his eyes shining into hers, and she felt comforted, even elated, for some vague reason she did not wish to comprehend.

“I must leave early tomorrow morning,” he said abruptly, and as abruptly went to the piano and began to play.

Snow fell upon snow, in silence and chill. It began as he left the house the next morning, the sky gray and the mountain clouded in mist. Winter settled over the eastern coast. In Philadelphia, too, it was snowing, her radio had announced.

“I hate to leave this warm house,” he said.

He stood at the door, wrapped in his rough, outdoor coat, its cap falling back.

“You are leaving your skis in the cellar. That means you will be back,” she said.

“Yes, but I mean this morning.”

“This morning,” she echoed.

She could not tell him what she was thinking, what she always thought when snow was falling. Arnold, lying under the snow! Of course she was accustomed by now, if she was ever to be accustomed, that is, and why should it be the snow? In the spring she could contemplate his grave without agony, and in the autumn the bright leaves falling from a maple tree near his grave made the city churchyard almost cheerful. But the snow? The realization of his death, desolate and final, had come at the first snowfall and she was alone here in this house. She had stood at the wide window, biting the knuckles of her clenched right hand, tears streaming down her cheeks. O Arnold, you lying alone under the snow!

Something of that desolation fell upon her now. The house had been full today of this presence, young and strange, yet he was no longer a stranger to her, nor ever had been or could be. Something they shared, something more than music, but what? He had been very gay this morning, almost as though he were glad to go, until at this moment when he stood tall above her, and she saw a look in his eyes, startled and unbelieving.

“Yes, I like you,” he said and so suddenly, as though he had made a discovery, that she laughed.

“Delightful to hear,” she said gaily, “and of course you’ll come back. The only question is when.”

“I’ll let you know.” He stood looking at her and then abruptly he turned and left her, closing the door firmly behind him. She lingered for an instant, gazing at that closed door. The house was silent about her, and empty.

…“The sunsets are always finest when you are here,” Edwin said.

She was sitting by the small round table in the bay window of his great square living room. In the distance mountain ranges lifted sharp peaks against a glowing western sky. It was her usual place when she was in this vast old house in the evening, and she seldom missed the sunset when the sky was clear. Today, the second day of her visit, had been very clear. She had spent the hours with “your old philosopher” as he called himself until, an hour ago, he was overcome with one of his fits of weariness and had gone upstairs to sleep. Now he had waked and had come to find her.

“The sunset is always finest after snow,” she replied.

She felt his hands on her shoulders, his cheek gently pressing her hair.

“The unutterable comfort of you, of having you in my house,” he murmured.

“I am always happy here,” she replied, motionless, her gaze upon the sky.

The colors were changing now, the violence of crimson and gold subdued to rose and pale yellow.

“Don’t move,” he said as she was about to rise. “I have something to ask of you.”

“Yes, Edwin?”

He was standing behind her and thus out of her sight, his hands still on her shoulders. In the silence she turned her head and saw an unusual tenderness suffusing his face as he looked down into her eyes.

“Is it something outrageous?” she asked, smiling.

“I am wondering if you will so consider it. But no — you will understand. I think so. In your own way you are an artist, with an artist’s honesty.”

“Perhaps you had better prepare me.”

He came from behind her then and sat down opposite her at the small table. His head, the white hair and clipped white mustache, the fair, healthy skin and bright blue eyes, made him a handsome portrait against the fading sky.

“How you can look as you do!” she exclaimed.

“How do I look?” he demanded.

“I shan’t tell you. You’re vain enough already.”

“That is to say — I’m lovable? For you, I mean?”

“Of course. You know that. Every time you ask me I tell you so.”

“Ah, but I have to ask,” he complained.

“So that I have courage to confess!”

They were bantering on the edge of truth again and beyond it they had never ventured. Or perhaps she was not ready for truth, and perhaps would never be. What she felt for him was an emotion altogether different from the willing love she had given Arnold. But that love had ended, stopped by death, and suddenly, for a while, there was no one to love. In the long months when she knew he must die she had wondered about love. Would it go on living after the beloved was dead? Could so strong a force continue to feed only upon memory? She knew now that it could not. The habit of love became a necessity to love and remained alive in her being, like a river dammed. Now it was flowing again, not in fullness, not inevitably, but tentatively and gently toward this man who sat facing her, his back to the sunset. He began to speak in his thoughtful, philosophizing mood, his eyes, so piercing in their blue, upon her face.

“The need to love and be loved lasts until we draw our final breath and from the need comes the power. It is in you, it is in me. How can this be, you may ask. Because, my child, my dear and only One, love sustains the spirit and the spirit sustains life. If love is mutual, then the two concerned can live long. Yet even if it is one-sided, the one who loves is sustained. It is sweet to be loved, but to be able to love is to possess the life force. I love you. Therefore I am strong. Whatever my age, I am sustained by my own power to love. How fortunate am I to have someone I can love! For I am fastidious, my darling! It is not every woman who is to be loved — at least by me.”

She felt an embarrassment entirely new to her, for at this instant there was something new about him. Whether it was the light of the sky beyond him, or a light shining from within him, he was for the moment transfigured, his face younger by years, his eyes bright, a faint flush on his cheeks. He leaned toward her impulsively.

“Let us have no reserves! I want you wholly. I want to give myself wholly.”

“What do you mean, Edwin?” she asked.

She was imprisoned by his gaze into her eyes, by his hands seizing upon hers with unexpected strength.

“May I come to your room tonight?” he asked abruptly, as though he struck down a barrier with one blow.

The question hung between them, unbelievable, yet an entity. He had spoken. There could be no doubt that he had spoken, and question demanded answer. She was compelled by his unchanging gaze. In her silence he spoke again, this time gently, as to a child.

“We inhabit these bodies, my darling. They are our only means of conveying love. We speak, of course, but words are only words. We kiss, yes, but a kiss is only a touch of the lips. There is the whole body through which the sacred message can be exchanged. And for what do we nurture the body with food and drink and sleep and exercise except for the conveyance of love?”

When she hesitated, transfixed by sudden shyness, he laughed, but gently.

“Don’t be afraid, my child! I have been quite impotent these ten years. I wish only to lie quietly at your side in the darkness of the night, and know that finally we are one, never again to be separate, however far apart we may be.”

She was able to speak at last. She heard herself say words as unbelievable as those he had spoken. Yet she spoke them.

“Why not?” she said. “Why not?”

…They parted as usual after the usual late dinner. In the presence of Henry the butler they said good night formally and so wholly as usual that she half wondered whether she had not imagined the sunset scene. And knew she had not, for with an instinct, long dead, now in her own room she searched among her garments until she found a lace-trimmed nightgown. She wore plain suits by day, their simplicity becoming her classic face, but secretly, at night, ever since she had been alone, she bought and wore, now that Arnold was dead, those fragile exquisite confections that he had disliked. Pajamas suited her better, he had said, and so she had worn them until he was gone. Then, and who could possibly understand this, the very day after his funeral she had gone to the finest shop in the city, and had bought a dozen nightgowns, wisps of lace and silk and, quite alone, she decked herself nightly for sleep.

Thus she decked herself now, after her scented bath, and standing before the mirror she brushed her long fair hair and braided it as usual and climbed into the high old bed as though nothing were about to happen, and lay there, her heart beating in expectant alarm that was also reluctantly pleasurable. Should she sleep — could she sleep? Debating it, she fell into a light slumber without being aware that she did so. She was wakened by his voice. He was bending over her, a lit candle in his hand.

“I knocked, you know, darling, but there was no answer. And so I came in, hoping to see you beautiful in sleep as I have been doing these last five minutes. Now I know what sleep does to your dear face. You were almost smiling,”

He put the candlestick on the bedside table, he lay down beside her as though it were already habit and, slipping his right arm beneath her head, he lifted her to his shoulder.

“Now then, we’re comfortable, aren’t we? And we are as we should be, man and woman lying side by side in mutual trust. I shan’t ask you to marry me, my love. It wouldn’t be fair to you. I’m too old.”

“What if I ask you?” she inquired. Comfort, sweet and profound, flowed into her blood.

“Ah, that would be a question,” he replied.

But no, she thought, she would never ask it. Marriage? She had no wish for it. Marriage would make her think of Arnold. Let her explore this relationship with Edwin quite free of memories!

Suddenly he threw back the covers and sat up to survey her. “What’s this lovely thing you have on, this gossamer garment, this silver cobweb?”

She lay smiling in enjoyment of his pleasure. “You like it?”

“Very much, but—”

He broke off and she felt his hands dexterously slipping the lace from her shoulders, from her breasts, her waist and thighs, until the garment that had covered her lay in a soft heap at her feet.

“Blessed be our bodies, for they are the means of love!” he whispered.

She did not reply, choosing to allow him to lead where he would, watchful only for distaste in herself. But there was no distaste. Nothing she had ever known prepared her now for his grace, his delicacy, the sureness of his touch. The philosophy of love! The phrase sprang into her mind. This was more than, physical, whatever it was. Then he put aside the robe he wore and lay beside her again.

“Now we know each other,” he said. “We can never be strange to each other from this hour on.”

There in the night they lay in each other’s arms, passionate and passionless. The moon rose high and shone through the wide window and she saw his body, beautiful even in age, the shoulders straight, the chest smooth, the legs slender and strong. He had given his body respectful care, and was rewarded even now. And how many women had loved this body? Impossible that so powerful a beauty of mind and body had not combined often in the act of love! But she felt no jealousy. This was her hour, her night. And it was true that, knowing themselves as they were, they could never again be far apart.

“Yes,” she said clearly and aloud.

“Yes, what, my sweet?”

“Yes, I love you.”

He gave a long sigh and drew her against him. “I thank God,” he said. “Whom I have not seen, I thank. Once more, before the end, to love and be loved! What more can I ask!”

With this he fell into light sleep. But she lay awake, still in his arms, awake and thinking of the strangeness, that she lay in Edwin’s arms, in this room, in his house. She was not in the least regretful. What he had said was true, it was right, but strange, nevertheless. And suddenly she forgot where she was, and fell to thinking instead of Jared Barnow. Would he ever come back again? And why should he come again, and indeed she did not care now whether he did or did not. In the moonlight Edwin’s profile was marble white, pure and perfect. She felt new reverence for the beauty of this body and the splendor of this mind. It was honorable to be chosen for love by this man, this famous man, visited even now by great men and women from everywhere in the world. And if her quiet love could add a day to his life, words to his thoughts, strength to his-frame, was not this, too, a sort of joy?

…She returned to her mountain house the next day and waited for the weekend. Snow fell and continued to fall day and night until on the north side of the house it drifted almost to the eaves. Sam, bringing logs, tunneled his way into the back door.

“How can people come for the weekend even to ski?” she demanded.

He grinned. “They’ll come because the roads ’ull be open. Folks here know that snow is their bread and butter.”

Reassured, she waited for the weekend. Then he would come. Jared Barnow — she spoke his name to herself and was shocked. How could she think of him after what had happened with Edwin? She searched her heart, her mind, to discover memories, not so much of guilt as of distaste. There were none. Could it be possible that she sought further completion of some sort? Of what sort? And what had Edwin to do with Jared? And why ask questions, especially when she wished no answers? Let life lead her where it would! She felt herself floating, passive, waiting for whom, for what, she did not know, she would not ask.

…“I don’t see you here in this house, you know,” Jared said.

He had come on Friday night, exactly as though she expected him, which she did and did not, hoping that he would come and again that he would not.

“You’ll have to be careful for the first year or so,” Amelia had said — Amelia, her old childhood friend, whose house was in Philadelphia next door to her own childhood home and who was still there, unmarried and living alone in a houseful of inherited servants. It was less than a week after Arnold died, and she had not been able even to speak his name aloud, but Amelia was without tact and said whatever she liked and at all times. They were in the upstairs sitting room, where she and Amelia had cut out paper dolls, had accumulated records, had designed frocks, had met for a last moment before her wedding and now were meeting after Arnold’s death.

“What do you mean, Amelia?” she had asked. Amelia had shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not speaking from experience, of course, but I’ve heard Mamma say that after Papa died — I was only three — she was so lonely that she was tempted to marry any man that asked her. After she got over that year she knew she didn’t want to marry at all.”

“I shan’t want to marry again, either,” she had murmured. Much as she relied on Amelia for diversion, she had never been able to confide everything to her, especially as Amelia, being rather plain and certainly too blunt, had never been in love, so far as she knew. The crudity of Amelia’s remarks had stayed in her memory, however, and she recalled them now as she replied to Jared.

“How do you see me?” she asked.

“In a great beautiful house somewhere,” he replied promptly, as though he had thought about it. “I see you with servants to wait on you. I hate you to be here alone. I don’t want you to cook my breakfast. I make my own bed for I can’t bear to think of your doing it. Only when you’re at the piano there, or sitting on that high hearth in the firelight, do I feel I’m realty seeing you.”

She was moved by his earnestness. “Thank you,” she said. “And you don’t know how you help me. I’ve known I must go back to the big house but I haven’t had the courage. I came away after my husband’s death, and I’ve lingered on, dreading to go back alone—”

He interrupted her. “I’ll be with you. What I mean is — I’ll come to see you immediately and stay over a weekend, at least, now and then, if you’ll let me.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m very touched, and you mustn’t for any reason, think it necessary. I shall be quite all right once I’m there — in a day or two. I have friends next door. My husband and I grew up in that neighborhood. In fact, it was a question whether we’d live in his family home or mine. But my house was empty — my father died soon after my marriage and my mother died earlier. I was an only child and so everything was left to me, and I’m really fond of the house.”

She spoke breathlessly, trying to explain all at once and not knowing quite what it was she wanted to explain. He listened raptly until she broke off.

“Perfect,” he said. “That’s where I want to see you, in a house that is your setting. This?” His arm swept the rugged room. “No!”

And then as though he had settled an argument he went abruptly to the piano and began to play a resounding polonaise of Chopin’s creation, and she sank into the deep sofa before the fire and listened, entranced by his new interpretation of familiar music. By his emphasis he eliminated every hint of the pathos that underlay the music and made instead a triumphant assertion of life.

“And what would Chopin have thought of that?” she inquired when he had finished as abruptly as he had begun and rising had come to stand over her, his brooding eyes upon her face.

“I make all music my own,” he replied, not removing his gaze.

And she kept smiling, half shy, half afraid. She did not know him. He was still a stranger. All the more dangerous then was this powerful attraction which had no basis in knowledge. She would have liked to ask him what his thoughts were and dared not. He spoke them without her asking.

“I want you to come skiing with me tomorrow.”

Her reply was instant. “I couldn’t possibly!”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I have no skis.”

“We can rent them.”

“I haven’t skied for years.”

“That’s an argument for — and this is probably the last good snow of the year.”

“It’s not good snow. Sam says the slopes are icy — warm sun melts them by day and freezes them by night.”

“It might snow tonight. There are clouds on the mountaintop.”

“And a shining moon!”

“Let’s finish this argument in the morning.”

“The answer will be the same.”

“Not if snow falls in the night — no, don’t speak! I shan’t let you.”

He put his hand over her mouth and held it there until, choking with laughter, she pulled it away.

“God, what a soft mouth you have!” he exclaimed, wondering.

“I’d have bitten your hand if it weren’t so hard,” she retorted. “And I don’t want to ski.”

“Stop there,” he cried, “or I’ll do it again. I won’t take no for answer.”

“You shan’t have yes, at any rate,” she retorted.

“For tonight, then, let it be neither yes nor no.”

She rose, half afraid. He looked at her steadily, speculating, but on what? She stepped back, he shook his head.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Your age.”

“You must believe it.”

He shook his head again and then suddenly he reached for her hand, took it, turned it over and kissed the palm. “I’ll never believe it.”

She stood, unresisting, astonished, the kiss in her hand an unexpected gift. He let her hand fall gently to her side.

“Good night,” he said abruptly and crossed the room to the door of his room. There he paused.

“I shall pray for snow,” he said and closed the door.

…In the night the snow fell. She woke after a few hours of restless sleep and rose from her bed and drew aside the gold-colored draperies of the glass doors facing the mountain. The light of her bedside lamp was reflected upon a curtain of soft white flakes thickly falling. The terrace outside was already newly covered. She would never be able to resist his determination now, and already yielding she returned to her bed and slept.

“My prayers are always answered,” he declared in the morning at the breakfast table.

“But I still have no ski clothes,” she said.

“All the more fun! We’ll outfit you at the ski shop, and get on our way. Come on, hurry up, no loitering over coffee, if you please! The sun is climbing fast. A good six inches of snow, though—”

“You’re really rather domineering!”

“It’s my nature,” he agreed cheerfully.

He got up as he spoke, gathering dishes, began washing and drying and putting away while she watched, amused, and finished her coffee.

“You’re very expert,” she said. “I’ve camped all over the world. Last year I was in the Himalayas.”

“Doing what?”

“Studying cosmic rays. Ever hear of a fellow called Tesla?”

“Of course. He wanted to electrify the globe, didn’t he, and provide an eternal source of electric power?”

“God, you’re knowledgeable!”

“I’m my father’s daughter. He believed that Nikola Tesla was infinitely greater as a scientist than Edison was. In fact, he wrote articles about Tesla — and introduced him to millionaire benefactors sometimes.”

“We’ll have to talk about Tesla tonight, before the fire. Now the mountain waits.”

He hustled her ruthlessly, he was impatient and unrelenting, and in half an hour they were in the ski shop, he ordering expertly and refusing argument against the latest in ski clothes, garments of which she had not heard in the years that had passed since she taught the children to ski.

“Skin tight,” he ordered. “That’s for fair weather like today. You feel as though you had nothing on. Fits you like your own skin.”

He studied her critically when she came out of the dressing room in the tight suit that covered her from neck to ankles. He gathered an inch of slack at her waist.

“You can take a smaller size,” he said. “You’ve the waist of a girl.”

He sent her back, and she slid into another suit, and came out again for inspection.

“Perfect,” he declared. “Now for warm-up clothes. No more long underwear these days! You slip on a sort of space suit overtop…And the skis — they’re new, too — plastic core and fiberglass — fine for any kind of snow, ice, crud, moguls, powder. Boots, please, young woman”—this to the bewildered clerk. “Leather on the outside, foam inside, and single buckles, though in my opinion the perfect boot is still to be made. Maybe I’ll think of something someday.”

She was ready at last and they climbed into their seats in the lift. The snow had ceased but the sky was leaden gray again and ready to let fall, but perhaps not until evening. All through the day they skied and she was childishly proud that her old skills were with her still. He praised her but he was critical.

“Your timing is not quite — look, you have to do three things at once, see? Pole plant, upweighting, switch your leading ski, like this! But keep your skis on the snow — very slight upweighting!”

He illustrated in a series of skillful turns and she saw that he was superb on skis, even as he was at the piano. He continued to teach her throughout the day, and she strove to perfect herself, her good body responding to new demands.

“Your traverse,” he was saying, “it’s a little awkward. Don’t pay heed to your shoulders. It’s your hip you must watch — hold the downhill hip back and everything else — body, shoulders, everything — will be ready for the traverse.”

She practiced again and again and not until sunset did she realize her exhaustion and even then it was he who recognized it first.

“I’ve worn you out and damn me for a perfectionist! You ski beautifully and what I’ve been insisting on are just the final touches.”

She protested. “But I’m a perfectionist, too, and I love it!”

He flung his arm about her shoulders. “Good companion! Let’s go home and dine in front of a roaring fire.”

Which they did, he grilling the steaks before the fire while she tossed salad in the great salad bowl of Burmese teak.

They ate in silence, and afterward he turned on stereophonic music and they listened in silence but sleep overcame them.

“I must go to bed,” she murmured, her eyes half closed.

“So must I,” he confessed.

They rose, they stood hesitating, and for a drowsy moment she thought, she imagined, he was about to kiss her. Instead he straightened and stepped back.

“Good night, sweet friend,” he said.

To which she answered nothing and indeed could not, for all her strength was needed for her own control. She would not, she would not invite the kiss, for to what end it might lead she could not foretell and dared not ask.

“Good night,” she said, and stumbled, still half in sleep, across the room to her own door.

In the night she woke to the patter of rain upon the roof. That was the end of snow, then, and of skiing. Tomorrow he would be gone and she alone again. To be alone now seemed intolerable to her. She would leave here and go home to Philadelphia.

…It was still raining in the morning when she came out for breakfast. Jared had already prepared it, table set, orange juice waiting, bacon brown and an omelet turned in the pan.

“The skies are cruel,” he complained, “but it’s just as well, perhaps. I must get back to the lab. I was going to steal another day, fight my conscience, but now there’s no need. You’re tired?”

“A little — no, not tired, just muscle sore.”

“Just as well we can’t be tempted.”

They ate again almost in silence and she wondered, with a slight resentment, if he were on guard. After all, she had not kissed him. On the contrary! But they were both formal this gray morning.

“Shall you be staying long?” he asked when, breakfast over, he prepared to leave.

“No, I am leaving, perhaps tomorrow,” she replied. Then, resentment still alive, she added, “I shall probably stop on the way for a few days with an old friend, Edwin Steadley.”

He heard this coldly. “Well, good-bye,” he said. Then added somewhat gracelessly, she thought, “Of course we’ll meet again.”

“Why not?” she said.

“In the course of human events,” Edwin said, “I cannot live much longer. I do not come of long-lived ancestry, and ancestry seems to count, in the matters of life and death. Already I have lived longer than my parents were able to do. My mother died at sixty-four, surviving my father by three years. He was five years younger than she. Their relationship was a strange one. In some ways he was like a son.”

“I shouldn’t like such a relationship,” she said with decision.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s because you have such an old lover. I could almost be your grandfather. But the truth is, my darling, that young men don’t really know how to love a woman. A young man thinks first of possessing a woman for himself — that is, of impregnating her. At my age a man knows this is impossible, and so he gives himself up to pure love of the woman, without thought of himself. He contemplates her with delight, as I contemplate you. He gives her joy insofar as she accepts his touch, which now is skilled, but in all such matters he thinks only of her. My dear, by the light of the moon, which by some heavenly magic shines at this moment upon your bed, your beautiful body looks like a statue of pale gold. What a fortunate man I am to be thus admitted to your private chamber!”

“I can’t understand how it happened,” she said, smiling up at him through the mist of her fair hair, loose upon the pillows.

“I had the courage to ask,” he replied.

“You asked very confidently,” she said, laughing. “I can’t discern any lack of courage in you. But how is it that I had the courage to accept and how is it that it does not seem strange, and certainly not wrong, that you are here? I have never taken a lover before. Therefore why now?”

“A need to give all and to accept all,” he said.

“And why am I not in the least shy?” she asked him with genuine wonder.

“We are one,” he replied. “Our minds were one, first, and then it became necessary that the oneness be complete.”

“And will it continue?”

“Until I feel death come near. When that moment occurs, I will let you know. Don’t try to stay me or comfort me. I must prepare for the solitary passing. I shall need all my strength for it. Therefore—”

Here he paused so long that, moved to tenderness, she drew him into her arms.

“Are you afraid?” she asked.

But he would not accept pity, even a tender pity. He loosed himself from her and leaned over her, smoothing her long hair from her forehead, and looked down into her eyes. Upon the bedside table the flame of the candle wavered in a slight breeze from the open window so that light and shadow played upon her face.

“I am not afraid,” he told her. “But I have something to say to you, and I want it said now, while I am able to speak the full truth of what I feel. Who knows what it will be when the end draws near? I may be dazed with pain. I may be faint. Death may overtake me in one instant and give me no time. Tell me, my love, are you at peace now? For this moment? We are quite alone in my old house. I sent the housekeeper home — it was some family anniversary — and Henry is away for a short holiday. No one is under this roof except the two of us. We may never again be quite so alone. May I tell you what I want you to know and to remember as long as you live?”

“Tell me,” she said.

He lay down beside her then, not touching her now except that he took her left hand and held it clasped in both his hands on his breast. Upon inexplicable impulse she had taken off her marriage rings tonight when she washed, and now, caressing her hand, he noticed it was ringless.

“You need not have taken off your rings, my love,” he said, and put her hand to his lips.

“I don’t know why I did,” she said somewhat faintly.

“An instinct,” he said.

“Of guilt?” she asked.

“Of honor,” he said, “but quite unnecessary. Love is never guilty. It comes to us, always to be welcomed, from whatever source, at whatever time. One love does not displace another. Each love is added richness.”

“But could I have accepted your love — as I do — if—” She paused and he carried the question to answer.

“If Eloise, my wife, and Arnold, your husband, had been alive? I would have expressed it differently, you would have accepted it differently. We would not be lying here in the naked moonlight. It would not have been necessary as it now is, to me at least, and I think to you, or you would not have accepted me. As it is, I, because I feel death near, you, because death struck into your house, we feel the necessity of bodily contact before the final parting comes, as it must, my darling! So let me say what I want to say.”

“Tell me—”

He drew a deep breath, he closed his eyes, he began, her hand still clasped in both his hands upon his breast.

“I want to tell you how I love you. I want to tell you now, while I am still fully alive, while my brain is clear, while my heart beats, while I have words upon my tongue. I love you. I have always loved you. I loved you before I ever knew you, before we ever met. I loved you because I knew the sort of woman I would always love, must always love, and when I saw you, I knew you were she. Of course I love your body because it is yours and because it pleases me. But I love your body because your spirit dwells there, because your incomparable brain is housed in your beautiful skull, because your soul is enshrined in your heart. I cannot imagine your body apart from the essential you, But I cannot imagine the essential you otherwise housed. You are entire in your whole being. I love the least part of you — your long free hair, your hands and feet, your adorable breasts, your waist, your thighs, the way you walk and carry your head. I love your voice, the look in your eyes — have you an idea how your soul speaks through your eyes? No, don't answer! I have more to say. If you had not let me love you — did you observe that I never ask you to love me? — I would have been afraid to descend solitary to the grave. As it is, my love for you sustains me. I fear nothing. I march to the unknown with steady step, for I bear in my heart my love for you. Love is the torch that lights my way. ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?’”

His voice rang out into the night. He put her hand to his lips and held it there. But she drew it gently away, she lifted herself and took his head between her palms and kissed his lips.

“I am honored,” she said. “As long as I live, I am honored. I shall never forget — never, never!”

…She was at home again. They had parted, she and Edwin, with a new ease. Whatever they had was somehow eternal. All impatience was gone. A profound unity existed between them, maintained by the flow of his letters.

“I shall write to you whenever I like,” he had said at the last moment, “but don’t feel you must reply. It does me good to put down my thoughts, crystallize them, actually, in my letters to you. I feel they are permanent, once I give them to you. If anything happens to me, if some morning I don’t waken, you have the essential man with you always. You may do as you like with me.”

With these words, he began a series of letters, which arrived almost daily. Without attempting to reply to these letters she received them, absorbed them, and when she felt the need of communication, she wrote at any hour, day or night, of what at the moment engaged her thoughts, relevant to his or not. He wrote:

“I am astonished that the more I contemplate death the more I am upheld by a new confidence in the persistence of life beyond. This may simply be wishfulness, and yet I think not. Or it may be that, infused by love as I am — thanks to you, my darling — I believe final death is irrational, therefore morally wrong, therefore impossible. I assert the impossibility by a new faith in immortality. It is not for myself that I make the assertion. It is because of you, whom I love as perfection, that I insist it is morally wrong that the creation of perfection end in mere dust. Somehow the entire being cannot be thus dependent on a temporary manifestation, namely, the human frame, composite of water and a handful of chemicals. The ability to love must surely have a significance, must surely contain a promise. Without love, it is easy to believe that death is final, but with it — impossible! The very will to believe suggests persistence.”

To this she replied:

“Spring is here. The old maple trees, which seemed to me as a child already as old as eternity, are clothed in tender green. My house is rich with early roses. The gardener specializes in a certain few flowers, and roses are one of the few. In the midst of all this color and glory, your letter is like music, or perhaps, better, a voice, putting into words the promise of immortal spring. Though winter intervenes, life begins again in spring. As for me, I am idle, simply enjoying, not thinking very much, too lazy even to visit friends. They visit me. I tolerate them affectionately but without enthusiasm. I am happy in myself.”

This was not entirely true, she realized, even as she sealed the letter and sent it off. In the midst of the ordered daily life, she was aware of a secret restlessness, a query she did not pursue. The air was still cool. No wind, no storm, disturbed the golden air. Never had the house seemed so comfortable, the grounds so encompassing, the smooth lawns clipped of early growth, the shrubbery controlled, the trees in bud and leaf. Yet in the midst of all this to which she was accustomed she was waiting for something more and, moreover, was aware of waiting.

She had received one short note from Jared Barnow, thanking her for letting him stay in her Vermont house. She had not answered it. Why should she, indeed? A casual hospitality, a casual note of thanks, an invitation casually given, a half promise of acceptance — all in all, but there was no more here than gossamer. She must understand herself. Loneliness was inevitable and not to be assuaged by one who merely passed by. She must busy herself, first with the house. It was now hers alone. It could be changed, improved, made new. After all, a house should change with changing generations, become the setting for a new personality.

A new personality? Herself — no other! She could be a different person now, someone she had not known, less shy, less retiring, more concerned with her looks, with her mind — in short, with growth. Arnold in his own way had been a retreat. In the shelter of his superior age, his success as a famous lawyer, she had felt no stimulus except to be what he wished her to be, his wife, the mother of intelligent and reasonably obedient children, a charming hostess, a figure conventionally correct in the conventional and correct society of an old conservative city. She had felt no great desire to be any other than this, for Arnold had not restrained her. She had not been aware of ambition unfulfilled and on the whole she had enjoyed her state of being. She knew that Arnold in his own fashion had loved her more than she loved him, but she had loved him, nevertheless, without regret, and she supposed their relationship was one common to persons in their life circumstances.

Now, however, it occurred to her that she might be quite a different person and a creeping curiosity beset her. Suppose, indeed, that she became someone entirely new? Suppose she began by doing what she wanted to do, saying what she wanted to say, going where she wanted to go? She could not define as yet such yearnings, but then she was accustomed to being as she was. Suppose, she told herself, suppose she studied her own desires as they might appear, once they were allowed? It occurred to her that she was in fact repressed, although unaware of repression. The house, for example. If she could not think of what she wanted, she could begin by rejecting what she did not want.

Walking thoughtfully about the vast rooms, looking at one object and another, it slowly came to her that she did not want any of it. It was not at all her idea of a house for herself. Grandparents and parents had built it, had filled it with the furniture of their own age, valuable, heavy, immovable. She would sell it — no, she would give it away, fill it with orphans or old men and women, homeless people whom it could shelter as it had sheltered her.

How did one rid one’s self of a shelter? And where would one build again? And what should she build, what could she build, when she did not know what she was? Or wanted to be! To Edwin she was a woman he loved and by so loving prolonged his life. To Jared Barnow she was nothing, perhaps scarcely an acquaintance. Suddenly she remembered her decision. She would do whatever she wanted to do — that was what she had decided. But she must do it quickly before decision faded into old sheltering ways. Now she must do it. She crossed three rooms swiftly and in the dim old library she sat down at her grandfather’s mahogany desk and wrote a brief letter.

Dear Jared Barnow:

I don’t like my house any more. I am tired of it. I want to build a new one. But what? Here is a chance for invention, is it not?

She searched for and found his note with his address. She would mail the letter when she went to luncheon with Amelia Darwent, next door. But at the mailbox, holding the letter in her hand, she changed her mind. What would he think? She put the letter in her purse and snapped it shut.

“But why build another house?” Amelia inquired.

They were at luncheon, the two of them in the oval dining room. Amelia, an only child, continued to live in the great old house on a large corner lot on the Main Line, in the midst of twenty acres of land, which was what remained of three thousand acres, presented to her ancestors in the days of William Penn as a reward for favors now forgotten. She sat, slim and erect, her hair becomingly silvery, in her usual place at the rounded end of the table. Rose, the Irish maid, a desiccated, elderly Rose, served them.

“Because I want to rid myself of old encumbrances,” Edith said.

“You can’t rid yourself of an inheritance,” Amelia persisted. She tasted her clear soup and looked at Rose reproachfully. “It’s not hot!”

“On account, madame, you didn’t come when called,” Rose said truculently.

“Oh, well—”

Amelia lifted her bouillon cup and drank the soup as though it were coffee.

“What’s next?” she inquired.

“Broiled squab, like you said, madame,” Rose replied.

“Put it on the table,” Amelia ordered. “Serve the salad, and leave us.”

“Yes, madame.”

Alone with Amelia, she unfolded her plan of a house, a place not yet clear in her own mind.

“I met a young man—”

“Aha,” Amelia said triumphantly. “I thought so! You look ten years younger. There’s nothing so absolutely cosmetic for a woman as a young man, or so I am told.”

“Amelia, you are repulsive,” she said severely.

“My dear, when were we not honest with each other?” Amelia demanded. “You are looking unnaturally beautiful — and have — ever since you returned from Vermont.”

“Amelia, will you stop?”

“Don’t pretend then, Edie!”

The two women looked at one another over the low silver bowl filled with small pink hothouse roses. Amelia’s black eyes were laughing and Edith turned her own blue eyes away.

“I don’t know why I tolerate you, Amelia Darwent.”

“Because you know I never tell anyone what you tell me, Edith Chardman!”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Edith said. She put out her hand and touched a rose. “I can’t see why your roses are always better than mine.”

“Bone meal,” Amelia said. “So what has the young man to do with the house?”

“Nothing,” Edith said. She helped herself to a squab.

“Nothing,” Amelia repeated.

“Except I’ll ask him for suggestions,” she amended. “But that’s nothing.”

“Then let’s not talk about him,” Amelia retorted. “Let’s talk about you. You’re someone to talk about! My dear, how shall you amuse yourself?”

“By building the house, of course.”

“But where?”

“Somewhere — by the sea.”

She was improvising as she went. She had not thought of a house by the sea, but the moment she spoke the words, she knew that of course it was what she had wanted for years. She had even spoken of it to Arnold once, long ago, but he had refused the idea.

“That surf, pounding all night! We’d not be able to sleep.”

“You’d not be able to sleep,” she had retorted. “I’d be lulled.”

“You can sleep anywhere,” he said with one of his wry smiles, never unkind and yet edged. He was always the superior mate, an attitude that she attributed to the combination of English and German elements in the ancestry, dating from the marriage of an early English great-grandfather with a German Mädchen. Environment had encouraged these ancestral traits. He had not even been overly impressed by her Phi Beta Kappa key, won in her senior year at Radcliffe. It would take time for her to recover from the atmospheric pressure of her marriage.

As if she had divined these thoughts, Amelia now spoke.

“Do you know, I am quite curious about you, Edith.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Arnold kept such a strict hand.” Amelia was vigorously salting and peppering her salad. “I shall be watching you, lovingly, of course, for I am very fond of you, to see just how you will blossom. For I don’t doubt you’ll blossom, my dear, with the charming looks you have. There are young men who actually prefer women over forty. Oh, yes, there are — don’t look so surprised!”

“Do I look surprised?” she inquired.

“Shocked, perhaps,” Amelia said. For an instant she pondered whether to confide in Amelia, that old friend, the astounding news of her unexpected new relationship with Edwin. Immediately she decided against it. She had never been given to confidences and, moreover, she was certain that Amelia would not be able to comprehend the quality of the relationship. Amelia would laugh, or Amelia would make ribald comments about lecherous old men, comments that would indeed apply, doubtless, to most old men, but not to a man as intelligent, as learned, as wise, as Edwin Steadley. To Amelia love was sex, whatever others might call it. Instead of confidence she replied with mild evasion.

“I am not aware of any great changes about to take place in me.”

A monstrous lie she realized as soon as she had spoken, for it remained incredible that she had accepted Edwin, had actually allowed him in her bed, thereby in that simple act asserting independence of the past years during which she had known intimately no man except her husband. And it was not to be explained to anyone, even to herself, why the intimacy with Edwin, at once fulfilled and unfulfilled, was no infidelity to Arnold, living or dead.

“Each experience of love,” Edwin had said one night in the darkness, “is a life in itself. Each has nothing to do with what has taken place before or will take place again. Love is born, it pursues its separate way, world without end, transmuted into life energy.”

“I doubt I shall ever love anyone else,” she had replied in the darkness. At that moment she had deeply loved the beautiful old man. Never had she known such a mind as his, crystalline in purity. That was the amazing quality. Even when he held her against him, the quality was not changed. She had loved Arnold, too, but he was divided, the one man intelligent, though not creatively so, a decisive, calculating self-confident man whom she admired and trusted, and the other a silent, possessively passionate man, who appeared regularly and without preliminaries in her bedroom to fulfill his primary need. She could not imagine talking in the night with Arnold about life and death and what communication might be possible between them. Arnold took it for granted that death was total end.

“I see a change in you already,” Amelia now declared, dipping her fingers in a Venetian glass finger bowl.

“Tell me what you see.”

Thus encouraged, Amelia lit a long taper-thin cigar and proceeded. “Well, you are less restrained, more unconscious of yourself, even in the way you walk.”

“I suppose I was always unconsciously conscious of being Arnold’s wife.”

“He criticized you too much.” Amelia’s tone conveyed dislike of Arnold.

“Not really. He was always gentle with me,”

Amelia laughed. “As gentle as iron!”

“Perhaps I needed iron,” she replied mildly.

She decided within herself that she did not like Amelia as much as she had supposed, or perhaps it was that now, living alone and without Arnold to return to for masculine relief, Amelia seemed aggressive and overpowering. She must not, she reflected as Amelia led the way to the drawing room, fall into the mistake of becoming involved with women friends and their ever-narrowing interests in themselves and each other. She must take up an intellectual pursuit, she must discover an individual activity, alone and for herself. It seemed to her at this moment that the new house, built entirely for herself alone, satisfied the immediate answer to the question. But what intellectual pursuit, what mental activity? She remained in Amelia’s house for another half hour, however, her usual graceful, amiable self, that self which Arnold had so admired and, of course, had loved.

“My dear,” he had said more than once, “it is pleasant to live with a quiet woman, and one also beautifully serene.”

It occurred to her that she would miss such remarks when she had time to do so. Just now Edwin’s letters, arriving almost daily, took their place. Arnold’s letters, in their rare moments of separation, had not been at all like Edwin’s.

“I really must go, Amelia,” she said.

“What can you possibly now have to make you hurry away?” Amelia demanded.

She gave Amelia her somewhat absent smile as she rose. “There’s always one thing or another,” she said vaguely, and left.

…The new house now took possession of her. She was glad she had not mailed the letter to Jared, for had she done so she would have shared the house already, somehow. Instead she had taken the letter from her purse and torn it up when she came home from the luncheon with Amelia. Nonexistent though the house was, she was already living in it. The next morning, sitting at the writing table in the library, she was not even impatient for the mail. When the houseman delivered it to her on a silver tray, she saw on top a thick envelope, addressed in Edwin’s surprisingly bold handwriting, but she did not, as usual, open it immediately. Instead she finished the wing to the new house, now taking form in a plan drawn on a large sheet of paper. Then she opened the letter.

“My dear,” he began exactly as though he had not left off, “it now occurs to me that death has at least one important use. There is no human progress without death. Life is never static and thus inevitably it progresses from youth to old age. But the old become too wise, too prudent, and therefore life must begin over and over again in the young, if there is to be progress. For the young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation. You see I am seeking excuses to die! I admit it. When you are not here, I feel myself dying. I ought to die. It is time. But I cling to you, my darling. I prolong myself through love. And yet, upon further reflection, I realize that I myself need to die, in order that my life may be complete and whole. It is only when I have end as well as beginning that my individuality is definite. When I say I, it means as a human being. No, I am wrong. Since you opened to me the door of your room, I am set apart from all others against common sense. Time has become my most treasured commodity. ‘You must live long enough to see her again’—this is what I tell my body every night when I lay it down to sleep. It is still necessary that I live, although death waits, impatient.”

She read the letter carefully to the end, then folded its pages, put them in the envelope and slipped the envelope into a secret drawer and locked it with a combination. Her servants, as curious as any now that Arnold was dead and she was, so to speak, alone, would not be averse to reading a letter upon the envelope of which was written so blackly the name of a man. This done, she took up her drawing pencil. As Edwin had written, it was necessary to live, and for her, too, it was necessary. And since it was necessary, what more, logical than that she should have the sort of house she wanted to live in? For she realized that she had never had that house. This vast structure now surrounding her, its twenty-two rooms spreading over acreage, was merely the house in which she had been born, and in which she and Arnold had lived, with their two children.

The house in Vermont, too, had not been built for her alone. No, she wanted a house where there was no place for anyone except herself alone. She could go to Edwin and would go to him when and if she chose, but he could never come to her and so there was no need to make a place for him. She would slip into his life occasionally and slip away again. As for her children, they had their own houses, into which she might or might not go as she pleased, and they had no need of a place in her house. Need there be even a guest room? Her mind flew to that snowy night when Jared Barnow stood at her door. What if he appeared again? But if he never appeared, a room for him would be a waste. Or, for that matter, there was always this huge house, its beautiful rooms empty, and she would simply return here to receive him. She had settled it. She would not have a guest room. The house would be entirely her own. Instead of a guest-room wing, she would have a sunken garden.

…It was perhaps a week later that the telephone rang just before midnight. She had worked ever since her solitary, eight o’clock dinner, drawing in meticulous detail the rooms of her house. Merely because she would be alone in it did not mean it would have only a few rooms, not at all. She wanted her interests separated by walls and spaces, the library separated from the music room, and especially she wanted a contemplation room whose semicircular windows encompassed the sea. She could not imagine how she would furnish this room, but when the time came she would know — and of course there must be the usual rooms for sleep and food and service, but where she dined must be open to gardens and where she slept must be open to the stars.

In the midst of total absorption she heard the muted telephone ringing persistently. Her daughter, she supposed, who, married long before Arnold died, made it a habit to call late at night, on the supposition that her mother lived a life violently social, whereas the fact was that she lived almost as a recluse, making excuse that she had not recovered from Arnold’s death. Thus prepared to hear Millicent’s high and silvery voice, she was unprepared to hear quite another, an impetuous baritone which she instantly recognized as belonging to Jared Barnow.

“It’s fearfully late, I apologize, but my little plane is grounded — something wrong in the engine — and it just occurs to me that this city, which has always been for me an adjunct to the airport, is in reality the place where you live. I could take a room at a hotel. On the other hand—”

He broke off expectantly and she quickly filled in the pause.

“Of course, come here. Have you dined?”

“Yes, in some other city. I’m due in New York tomorrow, but I don’t wish to go ahead and leave my little machine alone, not until I know what’s wrong. I don’t like tinkering strangers.”

“Come along, then. You’ll take a cab, of course — and the man will know the way. You have the address?”

“Do you think I could forget it? I’ll be there. Sure you’re not in bed?”

“I am here, respectably clothed and in my library.”

He laughed and hung up.

She sat thoughtful for moments. The day had turned chill in the deceptive early summer and she heard a spatter of rain against the wide glass doors that led to the east terrace. The fire was laid as usual in the great chimney piece and she rose and touched a match. No, she decided, she would not change her gown. She had chosen this one for herself, a green silk, a soft material and easy in its cut. Part of her new independence was choosing her garments for herself. Arnold had never liked green, her favorite color, the color of life and springtime and youthfulness of spirit, and the apple green of this gown was the one she liked best among the many shades of green. And then, to signify her new indifference, a manifestation of independence, she went back to the writing table upon which the plan of her house was taking form, and began to work as though he had not called.

She was absorbed enough, in spite of a secret excitement which she suppressed, so that in less than a hour, when he appeared at the door of the library, whither he had been ushered by her previous order, she forgot the intervening time.

“How good to see you,” he exclaimed, holding out both his hands for hers.

“Thank you for thinking of me when your plane came down,” she said, aware that he was holding her hands firmly, aware of his dark eyes warmly upon her, aware of his smile, frankly joyous. He was taller, younger, more sophisticated than she remembered him in ski clothes. She was acutely aware of his arm about her shoulders as they walked to the chairs by the fire and she drew herself gently away from his grasp and was shocked to discover herself uncertain as to how to proceed, confused merely by his touch. How stupid of me, she thought, as if so slight a gesture today had any meaning! She seated herself opposite him, unable to think of what to say, and so said nothing, but smiled at him, whereupon he began.

“I must say this is a different setting for you, and very becoming. I like these great old houses. One doesn’t see them very often. Is it lonely for you here?”

She shook her head. “I have enough to do.”

“What, for example?”

She was not prepared, however, to tell him about the new house and she replied lightly. “Oh, music, friends, books, or just — reorganizing myself for a new life.”

“No worthy causes and so forth?”

“A few charities my husband was interested in, and in which I am not.”

“I can’t see you a lady bountiful.”

She maneuvered the conversation away from herself, which was easily done, for he was staring into the fire as though for moments he forgot her and she did not wish to be forgotten.

“Tell me what you are doing now. I’ve only thought of a skier.”

He came back to her. “I? Well, I came here to see a man who lives not too far away — a scientist — engineer fellow, who dreams of combining the disciplines to focus them on medical problems. Doctors, especially surgeons, are extraordinarily old-fashioned in technological ways. They keep on using antiquated tools — you wouldn’t believe — well, the idea of modernizing medical, especially surgical, instruments through the new engineering techniques fascinates me. I’m a bit of an idealist, I daresay. It gives me satisfaction to imagine that an invention of mine might save a life instead of just, adding gold to the coffers of a multimillionaire — or blowing someone on the other side of the world to bits.”

She was not prepared for this sudden submersion into his thinking and she had no wish to pretend to understand what he was talking about. Her own defense against this new and all but overpowering awareness of his physical being was to comprehend his mind, his swiftly moving, brilliant, perhaps moody mind, as she vaguely surmised. It occurred to her now that she was beginning to see dimly the real man, not the young skier who came out of the snows and into her house in the mountains of Vermont. He was looking about the room now and restlessly, as though in search, and suddenly he shivered.

“Have you something I could drink — something burning hot? I’ve caught cold up there in the upper regions. Stupidly I forgot to bring an extra jacket.”

“Of course,” she said, and touched a button. “I don’t think Weston is upstairs yet.”

Her elderly houseman came at her call and she spoke to him in her usual kindly but distant fashion.

“Weston, Mr. Barnow is catching cold. Can you make him something hot?”

“Certainly, madame,” the man replied.

“And, Weston, I suppose the green room is ready for guests?”

“Always, madame.”

“Turn down the bed for Mr. Barnow, will you?”

“Certainly, madame. Will Mr. Barnow be here for breakfast?”

“Yes — and perhaps longer.”

“Very well. Thank you, madame.” He made his old-fashioned bow and went away.

“This is your setting,” Jared said.

“Ah, you don’t know me,” she replied.

“No? But I shall, in time!”

“Is there time? You are young and very busy. And I have — dreams of my own.”

“I must be in them.”

He made the declaration boldly, so confident of her approval that in herself she felt withdrawal, almost distaste, even while she was aware again of his physical beauty. She withdrew from that, too, abruptly.

“Tell me what you meant a moment ago when you spoke of combining disciplines.”

He was leaning back in his easy chair, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes closed. Now he sat up abruptly and opened his eyes.

“What do you know about medical engineering?” he inquired.

“Nothing,” she said promptly. “It must be something new, since my father’s time.”

“Relatively new,” he agreed.

“Then please be simple.”

He laughed. “Simply, then, it’s this: the medical men have been and are extraordinarily backward in the new disciplines of mathematics, physics and engineering. Yet they are working with life systems, without enough of the research that is essential if they are to do their work successfully. The very instruments upon which they depend for accuracy of diagnosis and healing are often so old-fashioned as to be obsolete. Medical scientists are becoming aware of this and some universities are creating departments of bio-medical engineering. But that’s a neither-fish-nor-fowl sort of thing so far, in my opinion, only creating men for jobs that won’t exist after a few years. I have a different approach to such interdisciplinary activity and that’s what I wanted to talk to this fellow about. He’s a pioneer in the field. I wish your father were alive. He’d be the one I’d be seeing first.”

“He’d like you,” she said.

“And I’d have worshipped at his feet! There’s no mind alive today that equals his. Why do the great ones die young?”

“Trying to save the world,” she replied. “He was on his way to Japan, to help the Japanese rebuild the cyclotron we destroyed during the world war.”

“I know. I read about it,” he said.

There was a knock at the door and Weston appeared with a tall mug of steaming liquid.

“Toddy, sir,” he said in his high old voice.

“Thanks,” Jared said, and taking the glass he sipped its contents. “Ah, that’s good. It goes straight into my bones.”

“Yes, sir. Good night, sir. Good night, madame. Everything is in order.”

“Thank you, Weston, and good night.”

The door closed behind him and they were silent. Jared sipped the toddy, his mind absent, as she could see, and she did not try again to recall him. She sat quietly looking at him while he gazed into the fire, sipping until the mug was empty. Then he set it down and turned to her apologetically.

“Forgive me. I’m not a good guest tonight. When I have a problem on my mind—”

She interrupted him. “But I understand. I shouldn’t like you to feel as though you had to entertain me. I was thinking, myself.”

“Of what?”

Impossible to say the truth—“Of you!” She was too shy for that bold truth. She spoke lightly and rose from the chair.

“I was thinking you should go to your bed and sleep away your cold. Your room is the first door on the right, at the head of the stairs. If you find you need anything in the night, press the button, on the telephone that says W. It connects with Weston’s room.”

“What a palace,” he said. He had risen when she rose and now he stood tall above her, and looked down upon her, smiling, and she looked up at him, uncertain of what was next. It was he who decided, abruptly and frankly.

“Do you mind if I kiss you?”

She shook her head, but was speechless, helpless in absurd shyness. A kiss was meaningless, a kiss was nothing nowadays, a kiss could be no more than a casual gift to one’s hostess. Ah, but it took two, one to give; one to receive! She felt his lips on her right cheek, and then lightly, very lightly, he turned her head with his two palms, and she felt his lips upon hers, a quick brush of warmth.

“Good night,” he said. “What time is breakfast?”

“Whenever you like,” she said, as casually as though there had not been this kiss which lay upon her lips a living coal.

“When do you breakfast?” he demanded at the door.

“At nine o’clock.”

“Good heavens, what a lie-abed!”

He pretended to be shocked and she laughed.

“Good night,” she called as he mounted the stairs. “Sleep well in that room! It was mine when I was a girl.”

She was sleepless for hours that night, and when she woke it was nearly ten o’clock the next morning. Her first thought was of him and she rang the kitchen. Weston answered.

“Has Mr. Barnow breakfasted?” she asked.

“Yes, madame, at eight o’clock sharp and left immediately, begging your pardon. He wrote you a note, madame — I put it on the breakfast table for you.”

She hung up, blaming herself. How could she have slept away the last hour of his presence? She made haste to shower and dress and, taking her seat at the table in the sunny breakfast room, she found his note under her plate.

“I am sorry to leave in this discourteous fashion, but I had an early call from the man I came to see. I am to meet him at nine o’clock in his laboratory. I have barely time to make it. My plane will be ready at noon. I shall be flying back to you one of these days. Here is my telephone number — and my thanks. Wonderful to see you again! Jared.”

She studied the handwriting. It was large and firm and very black.

…Summer moved into midsummer. Or was it only she who so lazily moved? In this first summer since Arnold’s death — he had died in the autumn of last year — she found herself given over to a lassitude that was far from empty. Indeed, it seemed to her that she had never enjoyed so richly the sensuous air, the scintillating clarity of sunshine, the lush glory of the flowers and foliage. Since she had not yet fulfilled the year of traditional mourning for her husband she had excuse to decline all invitations she did not wish to accept and to accept only those she did not wish to decline. Once or twice a week she went out to dinner or luncheon with some old friend of hers or Arnold’s, and on the intervening days she cleared from the house the last of Arnold’s personal possessions, his clothes, his pipes, his papers. When this was done, she took up her music again, and seriously, so that several hours a day were occupied at the piano, and other hours were spent in reading books.

She was only beginning to realize now that Arnold had absorbed her life, not purposely but quite naturally and always gently, or perhaps she had been too yielding in allowing herself to be thus absorbed. At any rate, she found a number of small desires to be fulfilled, certain garments, certain colors she had always wanted to wear and for which Arnold had expressed distaste; certain arrangements of the furniture which he had not approved, he being constitutionally opposed to change; even certain foods to which she had been tempted and which he had declared indigestible. Each liberty she now took for herself released her further until she no longer questioned anything she chose to do, as she had done instinctively and by long habit in the first months after Arnold’s death.

“You have changed,” her son told her on one of his rare and unexpected visits. He lived in Washington with his young wife and their only child, a junior executive in some government department leading to service abroad. She was never quite used to his seemingly sudden development from a sandy-haired rather prosaic little boy to a sandy-haired rather prosaic young man. He had been a good little boy and was now a good young man, touchingly so, she felt at this moment, when his honest blue eyes were fixed affectionately upon her. He had “dropped by,” as he put it, one day in early July, on his way to New York, where he was to meet a minor dignitary from some foreign country.

“How have I changed?” she asked half playfully.

“You look rested — and interested again.”

“Interested in what, Tony?”

“How should I know? Life, I suppose.”

“I am learning to live alone, that’s all.”

He leaned over her and kissed her cheek in farewell, glancing at his watch. “Now don’t you get lonely. Fay and I and the baby can always run up for a few days. Pity that Millicent lives so far away!”

She parried Tony’s suggestion.

“Oh, no — thank you, dear. I must learn to live my own life.”

“Well, let us know—”

He was off and she relapsed into indolence. She sauntered to the terrace upon which the drawing room opened and stretched herself upon a long chair. Indolent, yes, but a productive indolence, she told herself, sorting out life and feeling — feeling as she had not explored feeling since adolescence. The sun, warm upon her skin, enlivened her blood and yet infused it with delicious languor. And why, she inquired of herself, did she continue to dream of another house, a house of her own, when here she was the heir to beauty long inherited? From where she lay, she could see, and did appreciate, the vistas of clean-cut lawn, tended shrubbery and vast old trees, culminating at a distance in a quiet pool, a fountain, the marble figure of a Grecian woman, installed by her grandfather when these acres, this house, were his inheritance.

This remembrance of Jared, which never left her, quickened into sharp longing of which she was half ashamed. Had he not come so suddenly, had he not left so abruptly, had he not been obsessed by a dream of his own, a dream that obviously had nothing to do with her, had he, in short, visited her wholeheartedly, with whatever intention she could not imagine, then would he not have lingered here, have been beside her in another chair as comfortable as this one in which she lay, warmed by the sun and made languid by beauty? She was too experienced a woman not to comprehend the danger into which she was moving, and more than anger, for it was also absurdity. She would not allow herself to fall in love with a man years younger than herself. Years? Decades—

“Madame, the telephone, please. Person to person,” Weston said at the door.

She rose at once. Of course it was Edwin.

“My love,” his kind old voice said at her ear. “I find it impossible to live any longer without a sight of you. Are you completely obligated to others or dare I suggest a little visit? If it were possible, how gladly I would come to you! Legs could do it, but my heart, an ancient valve, cries danger. I don’t want to become a sudden invalid in your house, although for me it would have pleasant aspects.”

She was not quite prepared for so sudden a move. There was another presence now in her house. On the other hand, might it not be a protection against that invading presence, a reminder of age and dignity, if she visited Edwin for a few days?

“Let me think about it,” she told him. “If I can arrange things—”

He intervened with urgency. “There is no one to think of now except yourself, is there? And possibly a bit about me? The old heart ticktocks away, but it reminds me that it won’t go on forever.”

She laughed. “Shame on you! Blackmailing me!”

“Of course! All’s fair in love—”

“I’ll call you tonight.”

“I shan’t sleep until you do.”

Thus they parted and she was alone again, yet not alone, for she realized in this instant that she might never be alone again unless she could recover from the new presence in her thoughts. However she strove to think of other places, other people, the activities of her daily life, her delights of which she had many, her duties and absorptions accumulated through years of living in the same city, the same house, the new presence of Jared pervaded. In dawning panic she felt the need to escape, and how better to escape than to hasten to Edwin and, devoting herself to him, drive out that other?

Without waiting for nightfall upon decision she fled to the telephone and called. “Edwin, I have arranged everything. I will come tomorrow. I’ll drive myself and arrive in time to dine with you.”

“Blessed be tomorrow, darling — and blessed be you for answering my need!”

His voice was bright with joy and she was made hopeful. Let her be satisfied in comforting one who needed her rather than dwelling upon her own need! And what, for that matter, was her need? In reality, what was it, brutally put, but an incipient and dangerous infatuation, the consequence, in all probability, of her solitary life? For she was still unready to resume her old life of luncheons and dinners and such engagements, and uncertain indeed of ever resuming them and, in this uncertainty, inclined to new interests to be sought and defined, but assuredly not in the person of a young invader, a chance acquaintance who, if pursued or allowed to pursue, might threaten the entire structure of her reasonable and dignified life. Escape she must, therefore, and in the spirit of one seeking escape, she left the house early the next day after a restless moonlit night and was well on her way by midmorning.

It was a happy thought to drive herself in the small convertible car, concentration preventing the thoughts from which she was in flight. Speed and motion, the wind blowing back her hair, for she had put down the top of the car, gave the illusion of actual escape. A few days with Edwin would set her right, bring her back to reality. She would take shelter in the safety of his love for her and love him, as indeed she did, too, but quietly and with the respect due his age and great fame. Let her be honored by love and not roused by it — although perhaps she had made a mistake in allowing him to come to her room? Yes, it was a mistake. Tonight she would tell him so.

“Edwin, my dear,” she would begin. “We are past the age, you and I, when we need the physical expression of love. If others knew of it, they would construe it wrongly. It might even be shocking to them. Let us therefore be content with good talk and sitting side by side. Dear Edwin—” Here she would pause, here she might take his hand in hers and press it.

In reality, after arriving just in time for dinner in the shadowy dining room lit only by candles in ancient silver candlesticks, and after his rapturous greeting of her, she perceived that he looked thin and somehow pathetic in his loneliness. She put off saying anything that might dampen his joy in her coming, put it off indeed until after dinner and then put it off again because he wanted to talk about the book he was writing on the possibility and impossibility of immortality. He drew her hand through his arm when they rose from the table and directed their steps toward the drawing room, where a wood fire was burning against the chill of evening in the mountains. They seated themselves side by side on the settee facing the chimney piece, and he began at once, keeping her left hand on his arm by his covering right hand.

“One can’t test one’s own thoughts, you know, darling — and I am not at all sure of the validity of the philosophy I am hewing out of this old brain of mine. Is it too soon after dinner to think grave thoughts?”

“Not if you are thinking them,” she said, smiling.

He was silent for a long, moment, perhaps to collect those thoughts, perhaps to change the playful mood in which they had dined to his usual philosophical searching. Then he began afresh.

“You have had a very profound influence upon me, Edith, and therefore upon my thinking. I have rewritten several chapters in my philosophy which I had thought was permanent. You have brought a new urgency upon me to consider death, its finality, its meaning. I want to prove that death is not final. I want to assure myself that I continue because you continue. As for others, let them continue if they wish. It is my immortality which I must prove and to myself first. Therefore I have been considering death anew. Is it an end, or is it an entrance? But what is this self of mine which can consider death as though it were a state separate from the self? Ah, it’s the separateness that is so significant! I contemplate death as though I were continuing after its arrival, exactly as I contemplate it before its arrival. I, therefore, survive since I can contemplate myself afterward as well as before. Is that specious, my darling? Be frank — I urge the truth! Don’t let my new anxiety to live beyond the grave lead me into false paths!”

The magic of his beautiful, resonant voice, still strong, persuaded her interest. She was a stranger to philosophy in his sense of the word, and although she had studied philosophy in college, she had read enough since to know that modern philosophy had changed much that was old — Josiah Royce, for example, whose books had been her testaments in her senior year at Radcliffe.

“At least death is an interruption,” she suggested now.

“Granted,” he said heartily, “but only an interruption. The contemplating self, released from its temporary phase, would proceed to its next activity. Of that I need not speak, for assuredly in any activity you and I would find one another. It is the moment of death that I must analyze, if such analysis is possible. Is this moment only a fraction of time or is it — eternity?” His voice fell to a sudden whisper upon that awesome word.

She considered, deeply thoughtful, “I suppose,” she said at last and hesitating very much, for though she had thought long about Arnold’s death, yet she felt humble before this virile old philosopher, “I suppose that one approach might be to limit the definition of death by eliminating what we know it is not. For example, we know that the body returns to dust and is no more in its present components.”

“Exactly,” he exclaimed triumphantly; “therefore let us eliminate the body. That’s used and put aside forever. But what’s left, the self — can we go further than to say that at least the idea of its continuance is a reality? Or to put it otherwise, how much of a reality is the mere idea of it? Take atomic energy, released as fission between atomic elements. It existed first as an idea, did it not? It existed, but how much and how long? If the idea were right, then it was real to that degree. If it had been wrong — and ideas can be mistaken and therefore wrong, and therefore unreal — it would have existed briefly or not at all. Yet might it not, for all that, have existed in itself and forever, as an idea? In other words again, the beginning of any reality is contained in an idea.”

“Springs from an idea?” she suggested.

He repudiated this. “No, the idea is the first reality.”

“The possibility of reality,” she amended.

“Aha, I’ve got you!” he cried in triumph. “Then the possibility is in itself a reality, isn’t it?”

She pondered and made reply. “But possibility is not continuance!”

“No, but continuance is not entirely negated, so long as there is the possibility of continuance.”

She laughed. “So how to get out of this tangle?”

He did not laugh or even smile. Indeed he became intensely serious. Releasing her hand, which all this time he had continued to hold, he seemed to forget her presence.

“By the intuitions,” he mused. “If perpetuity is the reality of space, of energy, of atoms themselves, shall it be denied to us, who know our being? I reject the absurdity!”

She listened, enthralled, caught and held in the brilliant outpouring of words and logic and so continued for hours. When at last the clock struck twelve he stopped abruptly. “Good heavens, how I go on! And your angelic patience! Come to bed, my love.”

And in her bedazzlement, quite forgetting that she had planned otherwise, she let herself be led away.

…In the night she felt herself enfolded and, waking, she found him at her side. In the moonlight she saw his face above her, amazing in its strong beauty. Age revealed the outlines of perfect bone structure, the eyes, still burning bright, were steel blue beneath silvered brows. He had a tender mouth, not small, not large, the lips delicately sculptured, and suddenly she felt them on her own, passionately tender.

“I have been watching my love asleep,” he murmured, “so beautiful in sleep, my darling!”

“Have you not slept?” she asked.

“I will not,” he replied. “I want to know you are here — every moment I want to know. You give me certainty. I shall survive. I know, because I live! There is that substance in life which cannot yield to death. Plato was convinced of it, long ago. I have the right to live, my beloved. It would be too great an injustice, too irrational a waste, were I to die — I or any other who demands life. Survival will be because it ought to be. This is the great moral imperative.”

Enfolded, uplifted and encouraged, she felt her love for him rise upward as though on wings. She adored him with a sense of worship. His spirit, bold and brave, the ardor of his nature, the brilliance of his mind, piercing beyond knowledge, awed her and gave her protection. If there were one in whom she could put her trust, this was he. She drew him to her, she for the first time the aggressor, and kissed him full upon the mouth, feeling meanwhile delight and pain — delight because she loved him in a way she had not known before, with a pure pleasure, and pain because she must live in this body of hers years beyond him. But now, at this brief moment, brief because it could not be shared beyond the span of years, she felt herself swept clean of every other love. She had loved Arnold but without worship. Indeed, he would have been shy of worship, protested against it, rejected it because it made him uncomfortable. But Edwin had the greatness of simplicity.

“I love you,” she told him. “You speak of reality. Well, this is reality. I love you. True, I love you in a way I don’t understand, but I love you.”

He received this assurance with large calm. “Then we shall meet beyond the grave. The power to love — I to love you is easy enough, my darling, but you to love me, this gives me guarantee. Love pierces through all that is false, all that is ephemeral. Love finds reality, love creates the longing to live forever, and the longing is the promise of immortality. ‘He that loveth aright,’ Plato tells us, ‘is born of the immortal One.’ O my darling, thank you!”

He released her, he fell back on his pillow and, breathing a deep sigh of peace, was instantly asleep.

…She returned home the next morning and a few weeks passed, three or four, even five, possibly, for she scarcely marked the days. They were peaceful weeks, vaguely happy, vague because she made no effort. Amelia was in Europe for three months, and she had no word from Jared. She was almost grateful for his silence, for it gave her space in which to live with herself alone, to sort herself out, to discover her needs, if she had them, her hopes, if hope was necessary. Friends came to call, to tell her how well she looked, how glad they were that she was recovering sensibly from Arnold’s death. She listened, she smiled, she was silent. What she was beginning to understand was that a new self was appearing within her. With the passing of Arnold, a life had passed, her previous life, childhood and girlhood, her young womanhood, her wifehood. All things now were to be made new, what and how she did not know, but the cause was in herself, the cause and the source. She must wait for the self to unfold.

Meanwhile she worked on the plans for her house. In the mornings after her late breakfast, she worked, planning every detail, every color, every device. She was a good mathematician, and she used a slide rule skillfully. She would be her own architect, and soon she would go in search of a site. Then she would find a contractor. And this old house in which she still lived, what would become of it? Give it away? Sell it? With it she would be selling a lifetime of memories. That decision, too, must wait. She was not sure yet of her own destiny, She brooded often and long upon her new self, and this brooding separated her from the past. More than a house must be planned. A woman must live in the new house. Would she live alone?

She was in the library one morning, thus meditating, while she glanced over her mail. Still no word from Jared, but then he never wrote letters. If he wanted communication it would be by telegram or telephone. There was, however, a letter from Edwin. She was not quite sure from the handwriting on the envelope. It was sprawling and uncertain, not like Edwin’s surprisingly firm, black writing. But it was from him, as she perceived when she opened it, a few lines straggling off into nothingness.

“O my darling, the change has come! I am stricken. ‘Te morituri salutamus.’ It is I who am about to die — I alone. I die, as I have lived, in the faith that we shall meet again—”

That was all — no explanation, no description, simply he was dying. She started to her feet, but the telephone, ringing suddenly and sharply, stayed her. She took the receiver and heard a man’s voice.

“Mrs. Chardman?”

“I am she.”

“This is Stephen Steadley. You are a friend of my father. He has asked me to tell you. He is dying. It is a matter of a few days, perhaps hours.”

“I opened his letter just a few minutes ago and I was afraid—”

“Everything is being done. It’s his heart, of course. We are all here, my brothers, my sister and I — the doctors.”

“Is he conscious?”

“Very much so. Very interested in the process of dying, in spite of — difficulties.”

“Pain?”

“Yes, but he refused sedation. He wants to know, he says—”

His voice broke and she liked him for it. “You know we have been very close — friends,” she said.

“He adores you. We’ve all been so grateful that you broke through his profound loneliness. None of us could do it.”

“He broke through mine, too.”

It was all she could say. She could not ask the question, Shall I come? She could not ask it of herself. She saw him lying on the bed, that beautiful dying body, stretched in death.

“Good-bye,” she said softly.

“Good-bye?” his son repeated, surprised. “Oh, yes, well, I’ll let you know immediately.”

Immediately Edwin dies, she thought, but said nothing, her voice choked with tears. She put up the receiver, and sat with her head between her hands, her elbows on the desk. She had known, of course, had always known, that this moment must come. But now it had come and she must be ready to hear that he was no more. Should she go to him? How could she decide? Would not her presence sharpen for him the agony of separation? Better to leave him with his children; better to let him slip away into the unknown with his children about his bed.

She rose, undecided, and finding house and gardens intolerable she got into her small convertible, which she always drove herself, leaving her larger car to her chauffeur, and alone she drove toward the sea. The coastline of Jersey was impossibly crowded and she drove northward toward Southampton. Somewhere beyond Red Hills she would, perhaps, find a lonely cliff by the sea and there imagine a spot where her house could stand apart. By midnight she could be back. Yet what was the haste? Death would not wait and she knew she could not go to Edwin to see him die.

…At sunset she found the spot for which she searched. Between two towns she found a cliff and upon the cliff an emptiness. Doubtless it belonged to the owner of some great estate, but she would persuade him to sell. It belonged to such a person for at one side of the cliff, almost hidden by overhanging trees, dwarfed by sea winds, she discovered a narrow stairway leading to a small white beach between rocks. The steps were not often used, for they were covered with fallen leaves and moss, but they could be used, although she resisted the idea of using them now, because she was alone and if she slipped there would be no one to discover her plight, and darkness was falling fast, for the days were growing shorter. She must go back.

…It was midnight before she reached home and Weston was waiting for her.

“The telephone, madame. You’re to call, if you please, this number. And you had me worried, madame, if I may say so, you being alone like that and the night being black and no moon.”

“Thank you, Weston,” she said, moving to the telephone.

He bowed and went away and she rang and waited. In a moment the same voice answered, which this morning she had heard.

“Mrs. Chardman?”

“It is I.”

“I’ve been waiting. My father died at six o’clock. His last moments were very painful. We were all about his bed. But the strangest change is taking place, a transfiguration. All the lines of pain are fading away. A beautiful peace—”

The voice broke.

“He was very beautiful,” she said softly.

The voice began bravely. “Yes — much more beautiful than any of his children. The funeral will be on Thursday. Will you come?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to think of him as dead. For me he lives — forever.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Silence then and she put up the receiver. That part of her life, that strange interlude which she could never explain to anyone, and would never, that, too, was over. She sat for minutes in remembering thought. Somehow she felt no bereavement. She would be forever grateful for what Edwin had given her. Into the void of her loneliness he had poured love, generous unselfish love, asking no return except her occasional presence. She was glad the love had been fruitful for him, too, inspiring nun to a philosophical search which he might not otherwise have undertaken. She had brought him comfort.

She pulled out a drawer where she kept his letters, and choosing at random, she took up one which had come to her only last week.

“To me, about to die — perhaps before we meet again, my darling, though God forbid — it has become essential to define the problem of death before I can hope to solve it. Are those who have died ahead of me conscious of anything? For this answer I must wait. Yet I dare hope, for else why should I feel in these days a curious readiness to die, amounting almost to a welcoming of death, as though I wished to rid myself of this body of mine, which has served its final purpose, my beloved, in our love. Without love I must have believed death final; with love, my hope becomes even more than faith. It becomes belief.”

She let the letter fall from her hands. She lifted her head, she listened. The house was silent about her but in the silence she seemed to hear music, distant, undefined.