"As for myself, I did what must have seemed to all the others a ridiculous, almost a criminal thing. I ran to the door leading into the bedroom and tearing it open ran in, slamming the door behind me. It was by this time almost completely dark in the room, but without hesitation I ran to her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and as she sobbed her body rocked back and forth. She was, at that moment, like a slender young tree, standing in an open field, without any other trees to protect it. She was shaken as by a great storm, that's what I mean.

"And so you see, I ran to her and threw my arms about her body.

"The thing that had happened to us before happened once again, for the last time in our lives. She gave herself to me, that's what I am trying to say. There was another marriage. For just a moment she became altogether quiet and in the uncertain light her face turned up to mine. From her eyes came that same look, as of one coming up to me, out of a deep buried place, out of the sea or some thing like that. I have always thought of the place out of which si came as the sea.

"I dare say if any one but you heard me tell this and if I had told it to you under less strange circumstances you would only ha> thought me a romantic fool. 'She was startled,' you would say anc I dare say she was. But also there was this other. Even though was dark in the room I felt the thing glowing deep down in her am then coming up, straight up to me. The moment was unspeakably lovely. It lasted for but a fraction of a second, like the snapping the shutter of a camera, and then it passed.

"I still held her tightly and the door opened and in the doorway stood my friend and his mother and sister. He had taken the lamp from its bracket on the wall and held it in his hand. She sat quite naked on the bed and I stood beside her, with one knee on the edge of the bed, and with my arms thrown about her."

On a Gate Tower at Yu-chou

By Ch'en Tzu-ang

Where, before me, are the ages that have gone?

And where, behind me, are the coming generations'?

I think of heaven and earth, without limit, without end,

And I am all alone and my tears fall down.

II

TEN or fifteen minutes had passed and in the interval John Webster had completed his arrangements for leaving the house and setting out with Natalie on his new adventure in life. In a short time now he would be with her and all the cords that bound him to his old life would have been cut. It was sure that, whatever happened, he would never see his wife again and perhaps he would never see again the woman, now in the room with him, who was his daughter. If the doors of life could be torn open they could also be closed. One could walk out of a certain phase of life as out of a room. There might be traces of him left behind, but he would no longer be there.