CHAPTER II

1

It was several weeks after his interview with Lewis that Levine stepped out of his office into a street swept with wind and rain. It was welcome to him, tired out by an afternoon spent in unraveling the evidence in a case that was pre-empting the headlines of all papers. He ducked against the oblique advance of the rain, buttoned his coat across his throat, and resolved to walk the three miles to Bannerman's studio. Poldy had not been heard from since the day he left the hospital, and Levine was going to look at his pictures, his curiosity about them heightened by the fact of Poldy's disappearance. By looking at the pictures, Levine thought, he might be able to predict whether Poldy would return or not; though he could hardly have told what would be the cue for this revelation, what evidence in the pictures would guide him. There was, moreover, a certain portrait that he wanted to see, in the presence of which he thought he might decide things that were troubling him, that he mused over as he strode forward against the rain.

The streets were deserted. Walking alone in his long rain-coat, and with his head and huge shoulders thrust forward, Levine looked like a mythical figure doomed to appear in storms when all others are indoors. He walked rapidly, save when his glasses became too wet and a temporary blindness overtook him. Then he had to seek the shelter of a doorway to take them off and dry them. It was almost dark when he knocked at Bannerman's door, and found his friend working in bathrobe and stocking feet. Bannerman turned to him, revealing a forehead that was wet and shining from cold applications.

"Levine," he announced, "I'm a chart ... a regular chart." He paused and gingerly fished out a napkin from the bowl of water that stood under his easel. "I'm going to hire myself out to a clinic. I'm convinced that medical science has a great deal to learn from me. And why am I a chart? Because I can tell where every nerve is located by the pains I have. For instance, why does it suddenly catch me here? Right here, on this particular spot, whenever I put my foot down? Because there's a nerve there, of course, nearer the surface than the others." He lifted his foot and laid his finger with great precision on the tip of his heel. "May be a nerve there that they don't know about as yet. Never in the left foot, you understand, but always in the right. Now that must be significant. Or take this ... the fleshy part of the arm up here. There's a nerve here that's specially vicious. How do I know? It just barks whenever I move. As for my back, there's a whole mob of them there. Yes, sir ... a tribe of them. And one of them acts like a streak of lightning. Now watch this." He ducked his head forward and held his face contorted for a moment. "Aha ... there it is," he called out triumphantly, and demonstrated with his hand. "From the right shoulder blade across to the left ribs, then straight around my middle losing itself in the navel. I don't mention my head. That's entirely too complicated. But God! What a freak I am. Come in, ladies and gentlemen, and see the human chart. An illuminated chart, lit up by pains. What do you say, Levine, do you know of a good clinic that I can hire myself out to?"

"Nothing but your cervical plexus," Levine answered, taking off his hat and contemplating its wet surface. "But if your devotion to science is so keen, why not donate your carcass after death? It will mean much more to them."

"Now as to that," Bannerman lifted his finger admonishingly, "I don't know. I'm sensitive about it. No, I shouldn't like it at all. But here I am, quite willing to give my living carcass. I'd stand up before them and say: Gentlemen, watch! In another moment a pain will light up somewhere else, and you may draw your conclusions accordingly. Then we would all wait breathlessly, and suddenly, when it catches me here in the forearm my hand would fly to the spot, and they'd all say: Ah, there! ... there must be something right there. And they would all fall on their notebooks and write: Right forearm, peculiarly vicious; twinges every two minutes. Don't you think it's a brilliant plan?"

"I think it's plain exhibitionism. But incidentally, if it gratifies you at all to know it, you're probably developing a first-class case of neuritis. If I were you I'd give up painting for a while."

"Hm ... neuritis," Bannerman said suspiciously. "What are the symptoms?"

"Oh no ... oh no," Levine chortled. "You don't get _me_ to tell the symptoms. People develop too much pride about such matters. A woman that I had for a client once got very confidential with me, and came into my office one day, sick ... sick as a dog. This was wrong with her and that was wrong with her, and half a dozen other things, that she recounted for a half-hour in a heartbroken voice." Levine stopped to wring his hat into the bowl where Bannerman's wet napkin was floating. "Well, by the time she was through I decided she was a perfect case of catarrhal enteritis. Yes, sir, I built up a beautiful case for her, by picking a symptom here and a symptom there--those that I needed, you understand--and discarding others that didn't help the case. And then, when we were all through and she was quite enthusiastic, a dreadful thing happened. 'Do you have diarrhœa?' I asked. 'Are your excreta green in color?' No ... no ... that wasn't the case at all. Conditions were quite otherwise in fact. 'Very well, then,' I said, 'it isn't catarrhal enteritis at all.' Would you believe it ... she was completely broken up! She wilted, she was crushed. I tried to fix it for her when I saw how disappointed she was. We searched together among all the other symptoms, those we had discarded, to see whether there was anything we had overlooked that might fit in. There wasn't, of course. Her case was completely ruined. 'Madam,' I said, 'go to a specialist. This matter is very complicated.' And she did, and she called me up some weeks later, and she was just chirping with happiness. 'He says,' she said over the telephone, 'it's a _perfect_ case of an infected liver.' Emphasis on the perfect, you understand. Yes, my boy, it was so perfect that she died of it a month later. Why she had to. What's that you're making?"

Bannerman covered the object he was working on. "It's a doll," he said sheepishly.

"Really? Well, why not?"

"Oh, I wouldn't bother with a thing like this if I weren't called upon to do it. It's for a bazar. Several well-known artists have been asked to make dolls and I'm among them. Do you know about the Young People's Philanthropic League? It's a wonderful idea. No one can belong unless they're under twenty-three. The idea," he concluded sententiously, "is to enlist the youth of the country."

"Yes ... I see. Some old procuress runs it, I suppose?"

"What do you mean?"

"There are some women," Levine began, striding about the studio and whirling his arms in an effort to dry himself, "_old_ women, who, finding that they can no longer solicit men, compromise by soliciting youth. Young people become a sex to them ... a disgusting vice. I'm right, that an old woman runs it?"

Bannerman looked thoughtfully before him. "Well, there's Mrs. Wainwright," he said slowly, "a sort of preserved woman. But come to think of it now, she does give you the feeling of being old as mother earth, just because she's so preserved. Incidentally, Levine, you're sprinkling water on that picture. There's the faucet in the bathroom that I use as a hatrack."

"Yes, I saw one of them the other day," Levine continued after a temporary retirement to the bathroom. "I was standing on the steps of the library and she came sailing along with her victims, and mounted the steps and took out all sorts of banners and posters, and prepared for some sort of demonstration. Whew! ... how she reeked of being old. And in the midst of it, while she was fluttering around and giving directions, she stopped before one of the rather better-looking girls, and chirps out: What I like about you young people is your _youngness_. Yes, take my word for it. Whenever a movement has the word youth in it, be sure one of these old procuresses runs it."

Bannerman continued to look thoughtful for a while and then sighed by way of dismissing the problem. "Well, anyway," he said, "they're running this bazar and all the well-known artists are making dolls for it. No specifications as to what sort of dolls ... so I had a very original idea. Now the others, I'm sure, are all making _dolls_ ... the usual pretty little girls. I," Bannerman continued, removing the cloth from his work with a spectacular flourish, "am making a man-doll. Levine, what do you say to that?"

Levine gave a long appreciative whistle. "Not bad! Not bad at all," he said crisply, holding the doll at arm's length. "Complete ... horribly complete. Shoes, laces, socks, tie, and ... can it be? Cuff buttons. How did you manage it all, Bannerman? It's marvelous. There isn't a thing omitted. Marvelous ... these little buttons in the crutch of his pants."

Flushing at Levine's praise, Bannerman took the doll and balanced it tenderly on his palm. "It's quite an idea, isn't it, to make a man-doll. I thought it would make a hit. And when I thought of doing it, I decided to make it complete, as you say. No point to it otherwise."

Levine was studying it with narrowed eyes. "Bannerman," he began, "come to think of it, you've hit off one of the major faults of our American civilization."

Bannerman nodded approval.

"I mean the complete degeneration of dolls. Do you realize what has happened to dolls in this country? How completely they've been feminized? A degenerate fate, a terrible fate for a noble and ancient species. Take any of the dolls of ancient civilizations. We find they are always man-dolls, and always beautifully complete. But here in America, the doll--"

"Precisely," Bannerman finished. "In fact that's how I got the idea. I saw some Chinese dolls in a window, male of the species, and something of what you said struck me then and there. It's a beginning ... a humble beginning."

"And what is the purpose of the doll?" Levine continued with a rhetorical wave of his hand. "To throw the civilized being into relief by means of miniature. Very good. Yet what will excavators two thousand years from now, let us say, be able to learn about Americans today, if there should be only dolls to go by? After a while, having found nothing but women dolls, they will exclaim with horror: What, were there no men in those times?"

Bannerman, absorbed in adjusting an infinitesimal belt around the waist of his man-doll, nodded cordially at Levine's harangue. The pins in his mouth made him pucker his lips and scowl. "I can't talk while I'm doing this," he announced thickly, as soon as there was only one pin left in his mouth. "If you don't mind, Levine, play by yourself a while. If you want to see Poldy's pictures, they're off in that corner. Truth is, I've never taken the wrappings off. You'll have to undress them yourself."

Except for occasional grunts from Bannerman, when operations on the doll became too difficult, and the sound of Levine's movements as he unwound the cloth from Poldy's pictures, there was silence in the room. Levine worked awkwardly, making too many motions around the canvas, and all but stepping into one of the pictures. As they emerged he stood them against the wall, scarcely looking at them, reserving them for a time when they could be contemplated at leisure. "What sort of a chap was this Poldy?" he asked.

Bannerman, with his lips shut severely on the pins, looked at Levine and shrugged his shoulders.

"I thought he came here to paint."

Bannerman nodded. After a while he removed the pins, putting his hand to his mouth with a motion as if he had just eaten a cherry and wanted to get rid of the pit. "Look at his portrait," he said, noisily sucking back a thread of saliva. "He did the usual self-portrait. Not a bad likeness, either. About the only one of his pictures that he did well. Personally, I don't think much of a painter who doesn't do women."

Standing away from it, his head to one side, Levine studied Poldy's self-portrait for a long time. "Rather good-looking," he pronounced slowly. "Yes, quite good-looking. The dark and romantic type."

"Too much jaw-bone," Bannerman said.

"A little, perhaps. Makes the face weak ... too Christ-like."

"Yes, I think myself he was the weak sort." Bannerman's voice came muffled and distant from the closet in which he was rummaging. "He used to tear in here at any time of the day ... or night, for that matter, to paint something that was on his mind. Now one never has to be so urgent about things. The results are always better if you take it easy. Then there wasn't any scheme or central idea in his work as far as I could figure out ... no vision. Then take his peculiar attitude towards his money. It sort of frightened him. He went pale if you mentioned it, looked almost guilty..." Bannerman's voice grew fainter and trailed off into silence. He emerged and took up the man-doll again, his face once more severe and concentrated above it. "The hair," he mused in the interval between pins, "will give me a lot of trouble. Whether it should be straight or curly..."

"Make him bald."

Bannerman continued to work in silence. "Straight will make him too ferocious," he mused again, "curly is too effeminate. Did you say make him bald?"

"Make him bald, I said."

"But why?"

"Because," and Levine felt his own hair ruefully, "baldness is the formal hair-comb of the civilized American, isn't it? It's always been a sign of civilization to do something decorative with the hair, so he solves the problem by letting it fall out. Behold in me a living example." He stroked his hair, rubbing the thinning surfaces with a woebegone look. "Bannerman," he sighed, "take my word for it. There's nothing more formal, more civilized than baldness."

"Curly..." Bannerman said wistfully. For a long time he held the doll on his palm, his eye fixed tenderly and speculatively on its tiny celluloid scalp. Then he put it down and began to stretch himself to a loud vocal accompaniment, in the midst of which he paused abruptly to pluck off the little white threads that clung to his bathrobe. These he rolled between his fingers into a pill of perfect roundness, which he carefully mounted on a wooden cube.

"Personally," he began, carrying the cube aloft with sacrificial solemnity, "I don't think much of painters who don't do women. Now a woman's body is all you need. There isn't any arrangement of planes or masses that you can't achieve with a little ... research. And the chances for composition are endless ... positively endless. And then, what's equally important--in addition to pure composition, you have the woman there too. Instead of--" He shuddered and looked fearfully in the direction of Poldy's pictures, "oranges!"

Levine did not answer, too absorbed in unwrapping the pictures, and Bannerman put the cube down on a table in the center of the room and stepped back, surveying the arrangement with his head on one side. In the midst of his survey, however, his face suddenly contorted itself into a comic expression of pain, he collapsed groaning into a chair. "I swear to you, Levine, I swear that two muscles changed places just then. Oh lord, oh lord ... why do my muscles play leap frog inside of me?"

"Where was it?"

"Here ... right here in the shoulder blade."

"Yes, just where it would be. Take my advice," Levine said, setting one of Poldy's pictures against the wall, "and give up painting for a while."

For a long time Bannerman sat there, lifting his hand from time to time to his shoulder, with a fearful expression. He rose after a while and walked about the room, picking his steps carefully, as if he had the pains nicely balanced and did not want to jar them. Then he fetched an apple from out of the confusion of his paint tubes, and sat down again, holding it in his hand. When Levine looked round in the fading light, he saw Bannerman's plump white fingers vaguely and brightly outlined against the apple, and for a moment he had the feeling that the fingers were a five-petalled calyx, part of the fruit, and that Bannerman would have to pry them away. He felt sorry for his friend. Though there was too much flesh to Bannerman, it did not barricade him in, but seemed rather to be porous ... to leave him more exposed than others. And he tried to carry it off so gallantly, his head ticking from side to side when he walked, a light accompaniment to the major lilt of his body. It struck Levine for the first time, when he saw his friend sitting there with the apple, that he had always to be holding something; and after the core had been slowly and analytically consumed, he observed how Bannerman sat and rubbed his finger-tips lightly against each other, the auto-erotic play of his fingers when there was nothing to hold. But at length Bannerman rose and gathered his bath-robe around him. He announced that he would take a bath, in a tone of finality which seemed to indicate that this would solve everything. Soon sounds of splashing and singing emerged from the bathroom.

Left alone with the pictures, Levine was able to look at them more carefully. None of them had names, he noticed, and only one bore a signature almost illegibly scrawled ... Leopold Crayle. Another, the profile of a woman with dark flowing hair and protruding teeth, had writing on it: Hold this upside down. He did this, and so regarded, the profile took on a strange quality, the teeth growing out of the flesh like shining white petals. Levine stared at it for a long time.

Besides this there was a picture of three oranges floating against a black background that might have been a curtain; their surfaces were of a bright unnatural yellow, and in one there had been an attempt to present a mottled skin, but all that it looked like was a rash of green dots. There was a boy leaning out of a window, his hair of a fiery red; a landscape in the midst of which rose a mountain shaped like a pyramid, sculpted into steps on one side, and a tall white-robed figure standing on the third step. On the top of the mountain a goat-like animal stood with one foot lifted, and at the base three-quarters of a sun was visible, with rays of every bright color. There was a strange animal floating through a rain of stars, with five red-colored teats arranged between its dainty curved legs. And the last picture showed a group of kitchen objects on a dazzling white table-cloth. All these Levine looked at. He saw that the drawing was bad and the paint laid on thick and uneven. Yet there was something in the pictures that held his attention. In the darkness of the room a dazzling brightness of color radiated from them, it seemed that all the yellow in the world had converged on the three oranges. Though he could not guess at the meaning of the mountain and the goat-like animal on top, or the strange creature with floating legs that went through the sky, he saw that the artist had caught the brightness of things, seeing as a child does, perhaps ... dazzling color before shape or meaning can be discerned ... and that the sense of this brightness had been so urgent and terrible that he had forced his hand into drawing it. And then there was that other picture which Levine had come specially to see, the one of Marah Howard. Here too there was a brightness to be caught, but not to be snared so easily by color. As Levine studied the picture, holding it on his knees and peering at it in the dim light, he saw that Poldy had faithfully remembered the small child-like features, and faithfully traced the perfect oval of her face. But the eyes looked out at him too brightly. He knew this was wrong, he knew by heart the calm glance of those eyes, that always seemed to have just alighted with the simple and indifferent movement of a bird. Her hair was straight, falling away from each side of the swift part, and curling up at the ends; and it had pleased Poldy to paint it in separate sheaves, so that she seemed to be wearing long brown petals drooping downward. Studying this caprice of the artist, Levine realized how much more faithful it was to her than any literal portraiture. In the formal yet child-like headdress, the two natures in her were expressed ... that mixture of child and woman which seemed to be reflected also in her body ... in the slight flexible torso and the slow-moving limbs. It seemed always as if she had just paused from swift motion, as if a heaviness were creeping into her limbs, a transformation growing on her from the earth; her body, like that of the maidens in mythology, always on the point of beginning its tree-life. This too Poldy must have observed. But in the picture there was no hint of that fluent motion which her body possessed, whether still or moving; the figure stood heavily in the canvas, with one hand needlessly, foolishly upraised. In an access of anger at this gesture, Levine put the portrait from him, resentful that Poldy had clutched at this brightness, feeling a sudden revulsion for the pictures that stood before him. Decidedly Poldy would not come back. There was nothing here to recall him, perhaps he had even forgotten the paintings. And even if he remembered, yet what was there to come back to? Here, for a moment, Poldy had tried to possess the bewildering world in some way, to create a unity for himself ... and there were only absurd fragments. His mind dwelled in the shadowed periphery of things ... what center was sufficiently bright to lure him and hold him? For a time, perhaps, he had seen in Marah the central brightness of all things, he had probably come one night in haste to paint her, to possess her in that way along with whatever else dazzled him. Again Levine studied the portrait, with its intently staring eyes and petal hair, and the grotesque admonishing gesture, and his gorge rose with anger against Poldy. And yet, he reflected bitterly, had he himself any right to possession? Not, certainly, by that act which constitutes the technical ownership of a woman, not by any token except his own desire. That he should desire her physically! There was, to Levine, something infinitely humiliating in this, a sense that he had been tricked ... tricked into a wish that, by the profoundest standards of his being, he knew to be false to himself ... yet from which there was no escape until it had been fulfilled. And he knew that the whole burden of it rested with him. She was too secure in herself either to desire him or repel him. She would never give him a sign, imprisoned as she was in the perfect balance of her nature ... the balancing of mind and body against each other to the point of complete stillness. He knew that she could only take him passively, when the time came that he willed it.

Then why did he hesitate? What was it that caused him to hesitate, torturing himself day after day, ashamed when he thought of it, and unable to put it from his mind? It was a time for pairing off, he reflected. There was nothing else to do in the world, of any importance. It was a time when men and women paired off like children playing on the shore, saying: "Here we will dig a hole and see what comes into our cup." So that each couple caught from the sea a tiny circle of brackish water. "It will be brackish..." Levine said to himself, and the word satisfied him for a moment and seemed to make things clearer.

Bitterly pondering these things, Levine walked back and forth in the dark studio, taking a zigzag path through the statues and pictures. Meanwhile he was conscious of a presence in the room, something watching him with a cunning infinitesimal eye. He stooped down in the dark and looked at Bannerman's man-doll. "Yes, complete..." he said again, "terribly complete..." Holding it gingerly in his fingers, he carried the doll to the mantle and turned it with its back to the room. Tired now and bewildered, he sat down in an old rocker and shut his eyes. And now he remembered Poldy again, and what he had written ... hold this upside down. In those words he beheld all the vastness of Poldy's dream. He heard also their infinite pleading.

2

Early next morning Levine was awakened by the telephone. "Be up," a voice commanded. "I'll be over in ten minutes with important news." He recognized the voice of his colleague, a slight lisp in it that always flashed before his mind the vision of a pink tongue struggling against large teeth. Reluctantly Levine started to dress, feeling stiff from a sleepless night, and unequal to the impending interview. When he was ready he went to the door and unlocked it, then sat down at the desk, his hands clasped patiently before him. And this fore-handed unlocking of the door, this posture of waiting at the desk, were strange to him. Strange also to find that he could not bring himself to say come in, when he heard the knocking. Clandon knocked several times, waited, coughed, rattled the knob and discovered he could enter. "Don't you ever lock this door?" he asked as he hung up his hat and sat down opposite Levine. He took a newspaper from his pocket and laid it folded before him. Unconsciously imitating Levine's immobile pose, he clasped his hands over it.

"Levine," he said impressively, "the Eldridge case is cleared up. Last night at 8:55 Smith confessed. Out of a clear sky ... suddenly called for his lawyer and sat down on the bed and recited it from beginning to end. Out of a clear sky, mind you, after he'd been holding out so long that some people almost began to think he was innocent. Look at that." He unfolded the paper and held it up before him like a bulletin. "'Smith confesses under attorney's cross-fire.'"

Levine looked at the headlines. "What of it?" he asked.

"What _of_ it! That's a silly question, it seems to me." Clandon's face emerged above the paper with lifted eyebrows. "Can't you see that if Smith confessed, Konig is likely to do it, too? They catch it from each other. Why, it's--it's tremendously important," he spluttered, his face reddening. "It will shorten the prosecution by months."

Levine lowered his eyes, as if the headlines that Clandon held before him were too bright.

"Shorten it by months, I say, a question of months. The best thing that could happen just now. Once Konig hears of it, he'll tell, all right. You see if the contagion doesn't get him. Yes ... nothing, I repeat, nothing that we could think of could have been more fortunate for us at this moment."

"Not that," he continued briskly, unfolding a packet of legal papers, "I haven't just the right questions for the next grilling. Sat up all night fixing them, and somewhere among them, you can be sure, is _the_ question ... the one that always betrays them. You never can tell which one it is, but it's always there. Remember, Levine, what I always say when things begin to drag. Keep turning corners. Never go straight ahead. Keep turning corners. Suddenly you'll turn the right corner and find what you want. Keep asking questions. Suddenly you'll find the right question. Read them." He handed the packet to Levine, and waited with his head thrown back, studying the ceiling. "Good, don't you think?" he asked, when the papers were returned to him and he was folding them back in his wallet. Levine did not answer, and midway in his manœuvers Clandon paused, his head half turned away, looking at Levine with a coquettish smile. "Good, don't you think?"

"I think they're quite good."

"Rather ... rather. Something there that's sure to trip him up. We've got to make more of a to-do, I decided, over his failure to mention the money he borrowed. The big question is, the crux of the whole situation is: Why did he hide the fact that he borrowed money from her?"

Levine mused. "Four dollars ... the sum was so small he was probably ashamed of it."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," Clandon snapped. "Just where you're wrong! _Because_ the sum was so small, why should he hide it? Why? unless there was a pretty good reason for it. Now if he had borrowed four hundred dollars, or forty, or even fourteen, let us say--yes, even so small a sum as fourteen, then one could understand a certain desire to conceal it. He doesn't want us to know how far he was indebted to his victim. Now that's logical. But when a man goes out of his way to conceal the fact that he borrowed four dollars, out of his way, mind you..." he finished by shaking his head solemnly.

"I'll tell you what," Levine said, rousing himself with too much energy from the reverie into which he had fallen while Clandon spoke. "We'll go over the questions again this afternoon. I'll be at your office at three, how's that?"

"You just saw them."

"Yes, but I want to read them more carefully, that's all. Just now, when you handed them to me, I merely glanced at them. The truth is..." he paused and looked imploringly at Clandon, trying to placate his fierce stare, "I merely counted them. Thirty, aren't there?"

"Thirty!" the word clicked. Clandon paused, his hat suspended above him, arrested in its descent on the thin yellowish hair. In that posture he stood and surveyed Levine, his eyes moving deliberately from the bright hexagonal glasses down to Levine's red slippers. "Nothing to change, I hope?"

"No, I think not. In fact I'm sure of it. I just want to look them over when I'm less tired."

"As you say," Clandon answered with elaborate courtesy. "At three, then, in my office. You might, however, read the account of Smith's confession before that. Only for Smith read Konig. 'Konig confesses under attorney's cross-fire.' How does that sound to you?" His voice came back in an indrawn falsetto. "Try it over ... try it over," he sang from the doorway.

Levine took the paper and began to read; but just as Clandon was disappearing, he looked up as if reminded of something.

"Konig can't confess," he said sharply, "unless he's guilty."

The door was hastily shut and Clandon turned and stared at him. "Do you doubt it?" he asked softly.

"I don't know..."

A perceptible time elapsed before Clandon spoke again, with forefinger wagging impressively. "All I can say, Levine, all I can say, is that such an attitude on your part makes the prosecution of the case extremely difficult. Besides, it's unheard of. I might say it foredooms us to defeat. It would be better to resign now, Levine, than to go on in this spirit. But fortunately ... fortunately for us, I _know_ he is guilty."

"How do you know?"

Again Clandon looked at Levine, curiously, as if his friend had suddenly changed color before his eyes. "By the evidence," he snapped, and stopped. The tip of his tongue struggled ineffectually against his teeth, and above this struggle his eyes looked at Levine with mute reproach. At last he turned and slammed the door behind him.

* * * * * * *

Levine put the paper away from him with an expression of infinite disgust. There was a tightening in his throat, as if each detail that he had been reading had crammed him too full. He was not interested in the confession, he read almost without grasping the meaning of the sentences. What struck him was the routine of things ... how, once Smith had announced a desire to confess, one step followed inevitably on the other. It seemed as if a machinery was set in motion over which no one had any control, and that there was no end or purpose to it, and yet the motions had to start at a certain cue and could not stop themselves. It was this nausea with the routine of it that Levine felt now, that made him put the paper aside with the swift angry movement of one who has suddenly had enough.

He rose to walk off his anger. Yes, Clandon was a fool, he reflected, with his turning the right corner, his theory of the question. In his own time a man confessed. Nothing that others could do to him could hasten that time. Had there not been the case, some time ago, of Edward Reddick ... who, a year after others had been tried for his crime and acquitted, had written to the police announcing himself as the murderer? And when they refused to heed it, had he not come in person and proved to them step by step that he was guilty? Because, Levine told himself, a man can be glutted with his crime; he can have too much of it to keep to himself, and when that time came he vomited it out, and then one said he confessed. Glutted ... that was the word to remember ... and strangely enough, with that word his irritation passed. He sat down on the bed, and feeling calm again, began to take off his slippers and change into his shoes. He remembered now how Clandon had looked just before he turned and slammed the door. Those eyes glaring fiercely at him above the struggling tongue and teeth ... what were they like? You might think of the prow of a ship with a struggling of waves at its base, and two lights staring steadfastly above them. Clandon's eyes were the lights and his tongue and teeth churned under them. The pity of it ... that Clandon had been unable to say what he wanted. Levine smiled to himself as he finished tying his shoes, deftly tightening the bows.

But he was still bending over when the telephone rang again. The sudden anger that filled him projected him across the room, but there he stopped as if paralyzed. He seemed to be trying to speak to the instrument above the anger in his throat and the noise of the ringing, and at last the words came harshly from him.... "What do you want ... what do you want of me?" An expression of defiance settled on his face, he stared at the telephone as if to show it that he would brazen out the ringing. And not until it had stopped did he turn away, to lie on the bed feeling ill and exhausted from his paroxysm. For the time that he lay there his mind was a complete void, until a question, sounding distinctly in the room as though someone were speaking it, made him sit up again. Who is glutted? ... the question said.

Yes, how strange that he had not understood before this that the word applied to himself. And having found the word, one had, he reflected, already found the solution. It was clear that he could not go on with his work. The steps he must take were simple and inevitable: first to see Clandon and tell him that he would resign from the Konig case ... then he could reflect on the next move. Perhaps to go away. That too was obvious. But where and for what purpose? Well, later he could answer those questions. It was sufficient now to know that he must go away, escape somewhere. It was foolish, foolish to talk only of criminals confessing. There was a time when everyone became glutted with what he was doing. Now it was his own turn to confess...

Then he must call Clandon to cancel the three o'clock appointment. With that the solution began immediately. But then what reason to give? What could he say, so that Clandon would not come around to protest? Why not go there at three and count the questions again? Levine lifted the receiver, keeping his thumb on the hook. He held it to his ear for a moment, and then put it back, softly, as though someone might overhear him. Suddenly all his anger was concentrated on Clandon. It was Clandon who bound him to everything, who stood before him blocking the way to escape, with his tongue and teeth churning foolishly in his face. Again Levine made an effort to call him, clenching his hand around the stem of the telephone as if he would crush it. A voice kept asking for the number, and he listened, trying to think of the number, unable to recall it, though a moment before it had been in his mind. Then very softly, in fear of being overheard by the voice, he put the receiver back. He spoke out loud: Sit down ... sit down, you fool, and think...

What was he doing ... what was happening to him? Think.... But he did not think. He was only aware of himself sitting at the desk and resting his head on his hands ... he could only recall everything he had done since Clandon left, with a sudden sense of the strangeness of his behavior and a realization of his loneliness--the loneliness of his anger which no one saw. Now he felt like someone groping in a dark room, who becomes aware, because of the darkness, of all the gestures he makes ... stretching his arms in front of him, letting his hand crawl along the table, frowning and pursing his lips. In a dark room ... who could see him or hear? Twice he had spoken out loud...

And only a moment ago the solution seemed so clear ... Then finding the right word, Levine reflected bitterly, was not enough. Now, having come to the end of all words, he longed for unconsciousness, for a way to forget himself, even if it was only being absorbed in some casual trifling thing that was near him. In his childhood, he recalled, this had always been the solution ... the tired drifting reverie that came when his passion was over. And now, remembering this, he raised his head and stared before him, and let himself become absorbed with the pattern of the wall-paper, tracing the intricate winding of it ... until for a while he did forget himself. Then he found something else ... the two gold oblongs in the wall, each with its black electric socket; and for the first time he noted that they were close to each other, one oblong put in vertically and the other horizontally ... and merely noting this fact gave him a curious indifferent pleasure. And then he seemed to see Bannerman standing near them, as if it were a picture he had painted, and Bannerman waved his hands at the electric plugs and said: "Well, what do you think of _that_?" After which Bannerman stepped back and put his head on one side and continued: "Good, isn't it! You see the idea ... I'll explain it to you. There are two women and they're both fat. Only one is fat latitudinally, and the other is fat longitudinally. It is," Bannerman concluded profoundly, "the _idea_ of the picture."

Then Levine's reverie shifted to Marah ... He thought of her sleeping; her dancing body, having taken all its poses while it was awake, lying straight and still now in a negation of them ... in a gesture that was an erasure of all dancing. He saw the straight limbs with their perfectly carved cheek of muscle, blue-gold with hair and veins; and the faint line of the thighs, where the thighs are cupped in an ancient attitude of prayer. Her body lay immobile, no other pattern to it than its own intrinsic lines. Her body lay remote from him and unattainable ... and, having come to this word, Levine knew that his thoughts had reached their completion. And again he tried to assign the blame ... whether it was his own fault, the fear--no, the _faith_--that it would taste brackish to him; or whether it was the perfect circle of Marah's nature, as yet so shut-in and complete that nothing could enter it ...

And again finding no answer to this question, he gave himself over to the story of how they had met ... a story that he told himself often, hoping to find some comfort in it, a little assurance that they were in some way fated to each other, because of the strange and devious way in which they had met. But here a voice said with sarcastic inflection, "Strange and devious?" And Levine had to stop and explain patiently that for him to have acted impulsively was indeed strange and devious. "Over-emphasis, then," the voice said sharply, adding, "she is merely the foil for your impulse." He smiled bitterly in acknowledgment, admitting that it was true he had never seen her clearly ... But rather than go astray any further in these thoughts, he gave himself over to the story, beginning with that hot crowded day when he had been walking through the streets ... so tired that he seemed to move on the larger propelling motion of the crowd, rather than by his own efforts.

Merely for a place to rest he had entered a theatre, and spent the first numbers in accustoming his eyes to the dark, uneasy in the vast auditorium until he could discern the balconies and arched dome; and the faint outline of faces all around him, that looked so listlessly, so somnolently at everything that passed before them. By an effort he concentrated on the stage. Dancers were moving there, black silhouettes that seemed intent on a business of their own, indifferent to anyone watching. He found himself following one dancer through all the intricate threading to and fro, because, he thought, of something familiar in her gestures. And as this conviction grew, a feeling of intense excitement rose within him, he had the illusion that he could see her face and that he had known it for a long time. He thought too he could see the expression of her eyes, changing with the movements of her head.

Later he knew that this sense of recognition had been only a memory ... the composite memory of women which he had gathered all his life, of all the women he had ever seen dancing swiftly and joyously in pictures; and that now it was concentrated, suddenly and with the terrific force of something too long diffused. But at the time nothing had seemed strange to him. When he came in from the street he was committed to a new world and to a mood of acceptance; and nothing that he thought or felt at the time surprised him. Besides, he knew that whenever he was too tired things like that happened. Through the breach in his consciousness that tiredness made, old sentimentalities flowed in ... feelings that he was inclined to laugh at otherwise. And they came with a special vengeance, because he had withstood them so long...

He had hardly noticed the rest of the performance, all his senses dazed with a new feeling. And it had not occurred to him that he would ever have to leave the theatre, until there was a concerted movement of people going out. But, as he drifted out with them, he had stopped, hardly aware a second beforehand that he was going to do it ... and inquired the way backstage of one of the ushers. After that, the moments of standing confused and self-conscious in endless corridors, wondering which way to turn, while a young man in shirt-sleeves stared at him, and shifted his pipe in his mouth to stare better ... then asked Levine a question that demanded his telling the whole story. Incredible it was to be standing in that corridor telling what he wanted to the young man in shirt sleeves. He was, perhaps, dreaming aloud and consciously; and a specially painful moment in his dream came when the young man took the pipe from his mouth and held it suspended in air, as if this was a sight that required staring at with all his features.

She had not looked as he imagined. He was not even sure that she was the one whose movements he watched in the theatre. Yet what did it matter? Of its own momentum, now, the adventure went on ... she was for all times identified with the dancing figure he had singled out. He remembered also that she had not laughed. Recalling it now, Levine pressed his hands to his forehead, pressed his eyes until he could see them wavering in his palms.... trying to savor again the wonder of that moment when he spoke and she had not laughed. But the next moment something made his hands fly apart, he looked out at the room, wide-eyed and thoughtful. Was it that which bound him to her, then ... his gratitude for her not laughing? Somberly, his glance transfixed, Levine considered ... It would be a strange thing if he was bound all his life, only because of his gratitude for that moment; if all along he had been deceiving himself, and only now the mechanism of it was clear to him. The mechanism of it ... he smiled at that word. How many words are coming to me today, he thought. But he covered his eyes again, and something within him said wearily: what of it ... what of it. People were bound to each other in stranger ways...

At last Levine rose and went over to the mirror. He put his glasses on and a new expression came into his face.. He leaned forward and studied his reflection curiously. "You're a strange fellow, Levine," he said aloud. "You always think you have escaped, but something..." he leaned closer, "something always overtakes you." And now it seemed like a very easy thing to call up Clandon and say he would not come.

3

At three o'clock that afternoon he was walking with Marah. The morning was far away. Of all the morning turmoil only one question remained, and this kept going through his head with a rhythm that was part joyous surprise, part reproach. The question was: did you believe in this ... Because it was so good to be walking with her, he knew that he should have believed in it that morning; he knew that if he had only taken the time to believe it, nothing could have troubled him from that moment forth.

Did you believe in this ... It was always his custom, he told himself as he strode along ... conscious of Marah's quick and irregular steps beside him ... never to believe in the next moment. When he despaired there was no future time ... from the earliest years of his life he remembered it was so. He remembered the long nights when he lay awake, tortured by the conviction that his suffering would not end; and how, strangely and unexpectedly, there had always been the next day. How, also, the custom had developed of asking himself: did you believe in this ... And now, with the same old ring of delight and reproach the question long forgotten returned to him. "Fool ... fool," he laughed to himself. "It was so simple."

He was walking fast, gaining momentum with each step, until he lost the sense of movement and was aware of it only by the flight of trees and bushes beside him. Though Marah tried to keep up with him she had to make little running steps now and then, and she laughed softly at this as if she were cheating him in a game. There was a certain impersonality in the air ... neither sun nor wind, yet the air was a sharp and definite presence. Behind them as they walked the buildings of the city lost in height and distinctness, and one time when Levine glanced back they seemed to have moved closer together and to be crouching in ambuscade.

"Look, Marah," he cried with delighted surprise, "doesn't it seem to you the buildings have moved closer together? Doesn't it seem as if they had been watching us pass, and like people when they watch something strange passing, they move closer together as the strange thing goes farther away?"

They laughed together, and Marah had to study the effect with narrowed eyes before they turned and continued on their way. But they had gone only a short distance ahead when something darted from the bushes and flew against her face, stinging with the impact of its wings. She turned her cheek to Levine, fearful that there was a mark on it.

"I don't think so," Levine answered, stopping to inspect it.

"They say," Marah observed, shutting her eyes, her face upturned for Levine's inspection, "that if you take the honey away from bees in winter, you must give them sugar instead."

"Yes, you have to make candy for them."

"And they say that if bees have no place to put their honey they suffer terribly."

"Yes, I've heard that you have to build them a place to put their honey. If you don't, they go elsewhere." He examined her cheek carefully once more and released her. "Why, it's nothing," he said gaily, "only the force of the wings that hurt you. Now you would think that if you stayed twenty yards away from a bee-hive and molested them from that distance, you would be absolutely safe. But a friend of mine says he once shot into a hive twenty yards away and they flew for him anyway..."

As they strode manfully ahead, echoes of their talk lingered in Levine's mind. It seemed to him, after a while, that in speaking of the bees they had just been speaking of a strange people, and he thought this over, remembering that it had often been so in his boyhood. In his boyhood, he remembered, they used to sit around recounting to each other the habits of an animal ... saying, for instance, they never attack; or, they spend most of their time in water; or, they hide all winter. And then it happened that the animal they were telling about became so mysterious to him, so much like an eccentric person, that he used to think it was listening to them, he had even been frightened of its presence while they talked. But now it was good to have this feeling again ... the second time in their walk that a definite gesture of his boyhood came back to him. It made him laugh and catch Marah's hand as she ran her few steps to keep up with him. "Very well, then, a little slower..."

But he could not go more slowly, he could not help striking the trees as he passed or leaping for the low branches. Marah glanced at him shyly and tried not to notice that he missed the branches every time. She had never before known him to behave so much like a small boy, to laugh so unreasonably; and because of this there was a heaviness in her heart. In his strange gaiety she felt a subtle threat to herself, she knew the heaviness in her heart for fear ... the fear that today she would no longer be able to escape him. For a while she smiled in response to his gaiety with an abstracted air, as someone does who is busy and has to be companionable to a child. But after a time his sudden irresponsible outbursts of laughter repelled her, she found that she did not want to look any more at his huge body leaping up for the branches. "Let's sit down," she said sharply, and stopped short. "I'm tired." So they found a shaded circle of grass, ringed in with boulders that served, as they rested, for backs. But Levine, his gaiety suddenly at an end, looked at her with a puzzled expression.

* * * * * * *

After a while Marah took off her hat and crushed it into her pocket. She thrust her hair back so that it curled in a soft panel for her face, against which the taut finely-modeled cheeks were more clearly defined. Swiftly her mood changed. Lying flat on her stomach, her feet waving in the air, she looked up at Levine ... at his glasses in which the sun made bright prisms that shifted themselves like a kaleidoscope whenever he moved. His serious stare she returned with equal solemnity, and spoke in a solemn manner.

"Your eyes behind your glasses," she began, "look for all the world like fish staring out of a bowl ... just as mournful. Tell me, what do fish think about when they stare out so mournfully?"

Levine picked up a twig that lay near him, and began to rub a thin rut into the earth. The twig broke under his hand and he threw it away. "Shall I tell you what I was thinking about?" he asked slowly. And in answer to her nod he said, "I was thinking, just then, that I first fell in love with you on account of your shoes."

Her eyes widened incredulously.

"It's the way you lie there," Levine continued earnestly, "that reminds me of the time when I found you asleep in my room. You were lying with your face to the wall, and I remember that as I stood there looking at you I noticed your shoes. They were very tiny, I remember, with very high heels, and I saw how they were fastened to your feet. I can't really explain the feeling I had at that moment, Marah. But then I saw how your feet were imprisoned, and it made me feel such tenderness for you, and pity..." He ignored her quick impudent laughter. "I think I began to love you from that moment."

Her laughter arrested by the constrained tone of his last words, Marah pondered this. She was about to speak when a party of ragged little boys appeared in the clearing, held an excited conference, and all but leaped over her as they continued on their flight. Later came a straggler, who stopped to say breathlessly, "Which way ... which way..." But before they could answer he too was off. Marah looked after him. "So ... you pitied me," she said.

"But not in the way you think," Levine answered quickly, his eyes pleading for respite from her mockery. "It was more understanding than pity, Marah. In that moment I understood how many things bound you ... how you were bound by your beauty. I saw then that you were two persons ... the Marah that thought and saw, and the Marah that men saw. And when I understood that I forgave you a great many things."

"Oh, what did you forgive me?" she asked lightly.

Levine pondered in his turn. "I don't know ... I don't know," he said slowly. "Perhaps," he added almost to himself, "I think there is something to forgive because..."

She caught him up sharply. "Because of what?"

He looked away, and an involuntary bitter smile curved his lips. "Because I feel hurt..." he said.

She did not answer and a long silence fell between them, in which only the occasional clash of their glances betrayed the interplay of their thoughts. In this silence they heard people talking and laughing on the other side of the boulders, and after a while they knew they were no longer thinking of each other, but only listening to the words and laughter that drifted toward them. Levine stood up without warning and spoke in a petulant whisper. "How many people do you think there are on the other side?"

Marah listened. "I can distinguish only three voices."

"And someone who laughs all the time."

"No, the laugh belongs to the man with the deep voice."

"No, it belongs to another person who doesn't talk at all, but only laughs."

She looked up at him wonderingly.

"I tell you there's someone there who laughs and doesn't do any talking," he insisted irritably. "Laughs in a way that nauseates me." He gathered their things and walked away, looking angrily in the direction of the voices. His face was red when he sat down and he did not look at her. "It wouldn't be so bad," he muttered, "if he said something once in a while." And he seemed so unhappy that she put her hand on his arm and tried to console him, patting it awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Joseph. Let's go away from here. We can go where it's altogether quiet."

"No, I'm quite all right here, thank you. It's fairly quiet here. Let me put my head in your lap instead."

"Do you know what I wish, Marah?" he said after a while, shutting his eyes against the bright blue of the sky. "I wish I could lie this way all day, with nothing to do but listen. I wish I could hear the wind at this moment. There would be something healthful in it...." He paused, observing thoughtfully the fluted brown trunk of the tree that shaded them, and the floating branches above it. "Sometimes I amuse myself," he continued and smiled a little at his own words, "by thinking of all the sounds that no one hears. When part of a glacier cracks and rumbles away by itself ... to be present at such a lonely sound. Or when it thunders, I should like to be alone in the hills, listening to it. But I would be satisfied at this moment if only I could hear the wind. It would be healthful for me. Or what do you say..." he looked up at her, smiling and shading his eyes. "Is it all because my head is in your lap?"

Though Marah touched his forehead and the arched line of his eyebrows lightly with her fingers, in her expression as she looked down at him, and in that gesture of her fingers, there was something wondering and remote, something puzzled. She did not speak ... only in answer to Levine's insistent look she smiled slowly. Then he shut his eyes and was silent for a long time, she thought he must have fallen asleep.

"Joseph ... Joseph," she called softly.

But he did not stir until a long time after, until the sun came suddenly through the leaves and touched his face, and he opened his eyes and looked up at her without surprise, as if she were part of his dream. "Do I tire you, Marah?" he asked.

"No, I'm all right."

"Strange for me to sleep in the day-time," he mused, "and out-of-doors too."

"I called to you."

"Did you? I thought I heard it from very far away, and I tried to struggle back to you. But it was better to sleep."

"It's quiet here..."

"Yes..." He closed his eyes and listened for the quiet, feeling it all about them, complete and authentic. On his face now was the expression of a small boy who is content. He reached his hands up to Marah and drew her face towards him, and kissed her gently. "_Now_ I am happy..."

"But this morning," he continued, frowning a little, "do you know what happened to me this morning, Marah? I was very unhappy, and I heard a ringing in my ears, and it seemed that the only way I could forget my unhappiness was to listen to that sound in my ears. But a voice warned me, 'Don't listen to it.' Because this was like one of the perils in the fairy-tale ... if you once listened to it, then you would have to spend your whole life listening to it." He looked up at her, and there was infinite fear in his eyes. "Marah," he cried in a low voice, and it seemed as though he were calling to her from a great distance ... "don't let me listen to it. Help me, Marah, not to hear it."

"Do you hear it now?" she asked softly.

He sighed, as though something that had been troubling him for a long time was settled at last. After a while he shut his eyes and spoke with low halting words, seeming to listen for each word first before he could say it aloud.

"When I was little, Marah," he said, "I had the dream of spending my whole life alone on a hill, from which I could see both the rising and the setting sun. Sometimes that dream comes back to me now ... the earliest thing I desired, before I knew there were people in the world. But now it seems sad to me, a little terrifying. And do you know why it seems that way now? Because your presence has come into the world ... because all that loneliness of nature that I used to desire, is now only the loneliness of your not being there. And so my earliest, my profoundest wish is lost to me ... the impersonal is lost to me. Do you understand that, Marah? Do you know what I have lost for you?"

"If you knew," he continued, looking up at her and smiling again at his own words, "you would see how humble I am, how dependent on your favor. Because there is this difference. I could have the other thing that I desired whenever I wanted it, at my own pleasure. But having you ... well that, you see, is entirely dependent on you. Marah, do you see my humility before you?" But when she did not answer again, he sat up and looked away from her. "You see, at any rate," he said bitterly, "that I am not ashamed to parade it."

With a motion that was awkward and swift as a boy's she reached to him; but Levine mistook the gesture, and she tried to ward him off with outstretched arms, her eyes averted in terror. But all her movements to release herself would not avail, and she shut her eyes against him, waiting passively until he had finished, her face rigid with its expression of secrecy and fear. He looked at her with troubled eyes. "What is it, Marah?" he cried. "Dear child of mine, can't you tell me what it is?"

But she sat for a long time with eyes half-shut and oblique, and sighed deeply as if she were trying to awaken herself. From this trance she turned to him at last, with a look in which there seemed to be a profound and final understanding of things. "Yes, I think I know what it is..." she said faintly. But seeing how Levine was brooding in his turn, his face haggard with displeasure at himself, she rallied and laughed lightly, and drew close to him with a penitent gesture.

"But it's only a superstition," she said, "that occurred to me this moment."

"Yes, tell me what it is..."

Marah folded her hands in her lap and looked before her, her eyes darkened with their burden of unwilling knowledge. "I believe," she said slowly, "in this: that nothing can happen to me unless I wished for it in my childhood ... that everything that does happen to me is in some way a fulfillment of a wish that I made as a child." She paused, musing for the right words. "And these wishes," she continued, "were made without my knowing it, and only by seeing what happens to me now can I tell what they were. It _seems_ to me so," she added, frowning a little. "I can't tell why I believe it ... yet it seems to me so, I think it must be so for everyone."

Pausing in his motion of feeling the blades of grass between his thumb and forefinger, Levine pondered her words.

"Why, that must be true," he nodded gravely. "It seems so to me, also. But tell me, Marah," he added smiling, "did you wish for me?"

"I don't know..." she smiled back to him.

"But it doesn't really matter," he retorted gaily, "because I know that I wished for you, Marah. I know that."

"But in a way I did," Marah continued thoughtfully, laying her hand on his arm and looking at him with steadfast eyes. "Because I remember that one day in my childhood I made a pact with myself ... that I must never forget myself, never lose myself in anything that happened to me. Though why ... _why_ I made the pact," she mused, "what happened that made me warn myself, that I can't seem to remember at all. But I remember saying to myself: always _know_ what is happening to you ... always be watchful..." She stopped and raised her eyes to him with a swift appealing glance. "Do you understand that, Joseph?" she asked sadly. "Do you see in what way I wished for you?"

He did understand, and to hide from her the completeness and bitterness of his knowledge, he turned away. Again he felt baffled by the perfect balance of her nature, that security which kept her apart from the world, content to be merely watchful. Though he remembered such a time in his own life, he had also the bitter knowledge of what followed ... how from being too watchful he had grown weary, and come to desire forgetfulness ... a way to forget himself the one thing he had never achieved. "It's not true, Marah," he said harshly. "It's not true that you don't want to forget yourself..."

But she did not answer, and they sat for a long time in silence, until, like the swift change of mood in a song, Levine's anger and bitterness left him, and a sudden happiness assailed him, in which he knew all their words for nonsense. "Marah..." he called from his happiness, "Marah..." But she watched him sprawling grotesquely over the earth, his hands caressing the grass, his lips pressed to the ground, and again there was something remote in her expression, something slightly puzzled. She saw him tearing the grass and cupping it in his hands, and lifting it to his lips as though he would drink it. And she discerned in it the pantomime of possessing her. For a moment there seemed to be in her body the gesture of submission, a feeling of paralysis before Levine's will ... simultaneously she felt disgust for what she saw.

"We'd better go," she said sharply, "it's late."

"Why ... what has happened, Marah? What have I done?"

"I don't like this ... this smelling under the armpits."

"Oh, I see..." Levine sat up and looked at her angrily. He gathered their things and they rose and walked for a long time without speaking.

* * * * * * *

They came at last to a place where there were many small birches standing as in a stockade, with the skeletons of large trees lying among them. Where one birch had started to grow along the ground ... its trunk horizontal with the earth ... and then turned sharply upwards, they sat down to rest. The place was very quiet. Once a large bird started from the ground with a snort of wings, and Marah looked for it with startled eyes. But otherwise nothing moved. When the sun broke through the leaves it was as if a group of dancers with one motion had turned up the bright side of their fans. When the sun went away it seemed that the fans were being slowly closed. Levine looked up at a large maple that stood near them, and saw through the leaves a dark lightning of branches. He noticed the dappled effect of the leaves and saw what made it ... because on the edge of each bright leaf there was a dark segment, where the shadow of another leaf showed through. He noticed, also, that one of the stones in the earth was glistening wet. "Spittle of snakes," he said to himself, and he was surprised that these words came to him. Things occurred to him to do. He thought of swinging on one of the branches of the maple tree, his knees curled up, and then jumping down and letting the branch rebound. He wanted to feel the smooth bark of the birch trees with his finger-tips ... or take a twig and probe the soft, damp-looking lumps of moss. Yet nothing of this was necessary. It was not necessary to talk, or to touch Marah in order to feel her nearness. All their words, he felt, had been spoken; and there was nothing left now but the drift of impressions ... the lazy backwash of his mood, like a wave that had broken in its full height. He felt this rhythm, he felt the recession of his troubled mood. He was at peace in this moment, and his peace would not be troubled again for all the time that he was with Marah. He turned to her. "Now I have you both," he said softly.

She was sitting with her chin on her hand, looking thoughtfully before her; but rousing herself once and glancing around she caught sight of a tree that had the first red leaves of autumn. Her gray eyes rested on it with startled delight, and she touched Levine's arm with a gesture as if the tree were swiftly moving away. "Do you know what I have to say to myself when the trees turn color?" She laughed to herself with sheer pleasure at the sight ... "I'm almost afraid of it ... and so I keep saying to myself: is it any different from their being green..." To see the childlike delight in her eyes, and to hear her laughter and words, was for Levine an exquisite moment of forgetfulness.

But now it was growing darker, and with one accord they rose and stood uncertainly confronting each other. "Are you tired, Marah?" he asked. She smiled to him, as if she had not understood the question, yet wished to show that she had heard. "Shall we lie in that little open space and look up at the sky?" and she nodded silently. They lay down where they could see a stretch of sky fretted at its edges with the dark silhouette of leaves, and listened for a long time to the silence gathering around them, to a distant and ominous murmur that seemed to come from a great distance.

"Trucks on the state road...." Levine observed drowsily. It seemed to him that he was sleeping. The patch of sky that he saw between the trees, the faint sprinkle of stars, the fantastic shape of the leaves against the sky ... here what seemed to be the head of a gigantic horse rearing up from the earth ... all this was a scene such as only a dream could put together. It was too perfect, he said to himself, too allegorical.... If only he could consciously will that the dream should continue, and that Marah should always be in it ... part of the allegory, the meaning and core of it. If only he could lie forever in his waking dream, that seemed to rest him more profoundly than sleep.

After a time Marah sat up and clasped her hands round her knees. In the dark she looked lonely and child-like, and she put her head down on her knees as if she was very tired. "I had such a strange feeling just this moment," she said. "I was looking up at the sky and I lost all sense of looking up. I had the feeling that I was on board ship, looking at very still blue water all around me. Is it true, do you think, that you can forget you're looking upwards, and think you're looking down on the sky?"

"But it should be true..." Levine said, speaking softly and reluctantly, unwilling to break his waking dream with speech ... "Yes ... why shouldn't we be able to look upward long enough, until all our senses are accustomed to it, and it seems no different from looking down?"

"And the sky is really all around the earth," Marah continued in a drowsy voice. "You see it going down to the horizon..."

She lay down again, sighing. The darkness moved closer about them, and a single mournful cry of some animal came from the woods ... a note hoarse and bird-like. A long time after, when the cry had been forgotten in the silence, Levine spoke. "Didn't it sound as if there was an idiot boy in the woods..."

"Because animals cry out that way," he mused to himself, "like idiot boys. They open their mouths and a sound comes out, and you can't tell whether there is joy or sorrow in their souls..."

The cry was repeated, and Marah drew closer to him. Now it was so dark that they could not see anything beyond the place where they lay, and only the white outline of Marah's arms circling her head in an attitude of complete relaxation relieved the shadow. Almost palpably they felt the silence and darkness deepening around them, like stealthy water in which they were being slowly trapped. They rose, knowing that this time they were not to part, and they looked into each other's faces and saw confirmation of it. Marah drew towards him with a quick confiding gesture, and he could only guess by her words at the sweet and child-like fear in her heart. "Oh, where shall we go now," she cried softly, "where shall we go now..."