The young woman in the bed slept and in her sleep was again being carried swiftly along through the darkness. The woman with the cat and the old man who muttered words did not appear again, but many other people came and went through her dream-world. There was a swift tangled march of strange events. She went forward, always forward towards something she wanted. Now it approached. A great eagerness took possession of her.

It was strange that she wore no clothes. The young man who walked so swiftly through fields had reappeared, but she had not noticed before that he also did not wear clothes.

The world had grown dark. There was a dusky darkness.

And now the young man had stopped going swiftly forward and like herself was silent. They both hung suspended in a sea of silence. He was standing and looking directly into her eyes. He could go within her and come out again. The thought was infinitely sweet.

She lay in a soft warm darkness and her flesh was hot, too hot. "Someone has foolishly built a fire and has forgotten to open the doors and windows," she thought vaguely.

The young man, who was now so close to her, who was standing silently so close to her and looking directly into her eyes, could make everything all right. His hands were within a few inches of her body. In a moment they would touch, bring cool peace into her body, into herself too.

There was a sweet peace to be got by looking directly into the young man's eyes. They were glowing in the darkness like little pools into which one could cast oneself. A final and infinite peace and joy could be got by casting oneself into the pools.

VII

John Webster was telling a story. There was a thing he himself wanted to understand. Wanting to understand things was a new passion, come to him. What a world he had lived in always and how little he had wanted to understand it. Children were being born in towns and on farms. They grew up to be men and women. Some of them went to colleges, others, after a few years in the town or country schools, got out into life, married perhaps, got jobs in factories or shops, went to church on Sundays or to a ball game, became parents of children.

Everyone told things, talked of things they thought interested them, but no one told truths. At school there was no attention paid to truth. What a tangle of other and unimportant things. "Two and two make four. If a merchant sell three oranges and two apples to a man and oranges are to be sold at twenty-four cents per dozen and apples at sixteen how much does the man owe the merchant?"

An important matter indeed. Where is the fellow going with the three oranges and two apples'? He is a small man in brown boots and has his cap stuck on the side of his head. There is a peculiar smile playing about his mouth. The sleeve of his coat is torn. What did that? The cuss is singing a song under his breath. Listen: