He was thinking very clearly. Going on this way simply wasn’t worth it. It was not so much the pain as the indignity.

The sleeping capsules were really very mild and one would have to take a great many, but there were more than enough in the little bottle.

He attempted to think of life-situations in which he might be needed.

Liz had Meomartino and their little boy, and God knew he had never been able to help her with any of her problems.

Marge Snyder would miss him, but they had given one another very little for years. She had lost her husband just before Frances had died and they had been lovers in the period of great mutual need, but it had been over for a very long time. She would miss him only as an old friend, and she had an orderly life in which he would leave no vacancy.

At the hospital perhaps there would be a gap, but although Kender would prefer to remain a transplantation specialist he would as an obligation assume the responsibilities of Surgeon-in-Chief, and Longwood knew he would be very good, undoubtedly even brilliant, in the role.

That left only the book.

He went into the study and looked at the two battered four-drawer file cabinets full of case histories, and at the stacks of reference cards on the desk.

Might it actually turn out to be the great contribution he imagined?

Or was he, after all, indulging in the last gasp of a once-vital vanity, anxious only that there be an opportunity for medical students to consult Longwood instead of Mosely or Dragstedt?

He took the bottle of sleeping capsules and placed it in his pocket.

Defiantly, he had another glass of wine and then left the apartment. He got the car and drove through the cloudy early darkness to Harvard Square, thinking that perhaps he would go to a movie, but they were showing an old Bogart and he continued right on through the square, observing that Frances wouldn’t recognize it, all bare feet and beards and exposed thighs.

He circled the Yard and parked not far from the Appleton Chapel. Without knowing why he got out of the car and entered Appleton, which was quiet and deserted; what religion had always been to him.

Soon there were footsteps: “Can I be of help to you?”

Longwood didn’t know whether the polite young man was a chaplain but he saw that he was hardly older than an intern.

“I don’t believe so,” he said.

He went outside again and into the car. This time he knew where he was going. He drove to Weston and when he had reached the farm pulled the car off the road so that he was parked overlooking the meadow where they had held their ball games.

He couldn’t tell very much in the dark but it seemed to be unchanged. A few feet from the car a great old silver-gray beech still stood; he was glad it had survived.