At the same hour at the tip of the Observatory astronomers were tabulating mileage between planets, and just as Djuna had learned to measure such mileage by the oscillations of her heart (he is warm and near, he is remote and cool) from her first experience with Michael, past master in the art of creating distance between human beings, Michael himself arrived with Donald and she could see instantly that he was suffering from his full awareness of the impenetrable distance between himself and Donald, between himself and the world of adolescence he wanted to remain in forever and from which his lack of playfulness and recklessness barred him.

As soon as Michael saw Djuna's eyes he had the feeling of being restored to visibility, as if by gazing into the clear mirrors of her compassion he were reincarnated, for the relentless work accomplished by Donald's exclusion of him from his boyish world deprived him of his very existence.

Djuna needed only to say: Hello, Michael! for him to feel he was no longer a kindly protective ghost necessary to Donald's existence. For Djuna saw him handsome, gifted in astronomy and mathematics, rich with many knowledges, eloquent when properly warmed.

Hello, Michael! Djuna said, and the 100000000000000000000000000 miles between himself and human beings became like a small pencil addition on a note paper and not a state of being. They were laid aside like a student's abstractions, and now he was sitting in a café and Donald at his right was merely a very beautiful boy of which there were so many, cut out like a clay pigeon at the fair, with only a façade, and that is what Djuna had called him from the very beginning (the first time she had said it he had been angry and brooded on the insufferable jealousy of woman). Hello, Michael! How is your clay pigeon today?

Such fine threads passed between Michael and Djuna. He could always seize the intermediary color of her mood. That was his charm, his quality, this fine incision from his knowledge of woman, this capacity for dealing in essences.

This love without possibility of incarnation which took place between Djuna and all the descendants of Michael, the lineage of these carriers of subtleties known only to men of his race.

They had found a territory which existed beyond sensual countries, and by a communion of swift words could charm each other actively in spite of the knowledge that this enchantment would have no ordinary culmination.

"Djuna," said Michael, "I see all your thoughts running in all directions, like minnows."

Then immediately he knew this in her was a symptom of anxiety, and he avoided the question which would have wounded her: "Has Paul's father sent him to India?"

For in the way she sat there he knew she was awaiting a mortal blow.

At this moment there appeared on the marble-topped tables the stains of drink, the sediments and dregs of false beatitudes.