The curtain went up on his inner stage—one by one his characters came on, first faintly outlined, then more clearly, at last in full illumination. The outer world vanished, love, grief, poverty, sickness, debt, the long disappointments and the little daily torments, even the consoling landscape which enveloped him, all shrivelled up like the universe in the Apocalypse, with nothing left in an unlit void but that one small luminous space. The phenomenon was not new, but he had never before been detached enough to observe it in its mysterious acuity. Of all the myriad world nothing was left but this tiny centre of concentrated activity, in which creatures born without his will lived out their complicated and passionate lives. At such moments his most vivid personal experiences paled with the rest of reality, and some mysterious transfusion of spirit made him no longer himself but the life element of these beings evoked from nowhere. They were there, they were real, they were the sole reality, and he who was the condition of their existence was yet apart from them, and empowered to be their chronicler… . Tramping back after dark, hungry and happy under the sharp autumn stars, he stood still suddenly and thought: "God, if I could tell her—" But even that pang was a passing one. These people were his people, he held the threads of their lives, it was to him the vision had been given—for the time that seemed enough, seemed all his straining consciousness could hold… .

From the bungalow a light winked through the apple branch on which his book had hung. The gleam gave him a feeling of homely reassurance. He saw the supper table in the kitchen, his desk with the beckoning lamp. As soon as he had eaten something he would get to work under that lamp, with the great shadowy night looking on him… .

Under the apple tree he halted and listened. Perhaps he would hear Laura Lou singing, and see her shadow moving on the drawn-down blind. But the house was silent. He walked up to the door and went in. The table was laid with a box of sardines, potatoes, and pickles. All was orderly and inviting; but Laura Lou was not there. The remembrance of her pale face with that queer drawn smile returned disquietingly, and he pushed open the door of their room. It was dark, and he went back for the lamp. Laura Lou lay on the bed, the blankets drawn up. She was motionless; she did not turn as he entered. Lamp in hand he bent over, half afraid; but as the light struck her lids they lifted, and she looked at him calmly, as she had on their wedding night when he had come back with provisions from the farm and found her sleeping. His anxiety fell from him. "Hullo—I guess I woke you up," he said.

She smiled a little, not painfully but naturally. "Yes."

"You're not sick, child?"