“That boy, you know — the pneumonia case — I have to go at once.”

“And I must change and finish packing. I’ll tidy the room up too.”

“Thanks … Maybe I’ll be back soon.” And he added, gently: “It was very beautiful.”

Ten minutes later he was in the familiar strangeness of rooms and stairs. There could be no doubt about the case this time.

He sat by the bedside, taking a small hand in his own, and the boy, half conscious as he fought for breath, looked up and smiled. Suddenly — almost immediately — death came. Weeks afterwards the boy’s father, in the fourale bar of the “Greyhound,” described the incident. “He killed our Johnny, too. Pewmonia, Johnny had, double pewmonia, and Newcome had bin to see him several times but never done the boy no good. And it was that night — that night, mind you. Maybe he was thinkin’ about it all the time he was with our Johnny. Because what d’you think he did when he got to the boy? Why, nothing. Just sat there and let the poor kid die without so much as raising a finger! The dirty swine!”

We do not know what to-night, much less to-night’s newspaper, will bring. Some secret intersection of seconds and inches may mean an end to us, our age, the world. In Calderbury on that evening of August fourth, the train brought in later editions from Marsland, catching the sunset on its windows so that a flash of crimson streaked the watermeadows. In the streets of the town the newspapers were scrambled for, and one of them by the little doctor, who stood reading it as he held his bicycle at the curb. “Looks bad, doctor,” someone said.

“Yes, indeed. Good God, I never thought they’d actually come to it!”

“Soon over, you bet. Wait till the Navy —”

Half listening, he read paragraphs about mobilizations, troops rushed to frontiers, bombardments, opened on fortifications, refugees streaming from ravaged lands, the plight of travelers and aliens. Abruptly then he moved off along Briargate, pedaling faster than usual, till he was hot and breathless. He entered the house through the surgery, leaving the bicycle against the wall in the outside alley. Mechanically he unlocked a cupboard to replace some drugs he had carried with him in his bag. He could feel his heart pounding with excitement as he climbed the stairs to the attic room where he guessed Leni would be waiting. He was that strange creature, a quiet man resolved upon an act. The trouble was that life with Jessica had given him this curious reluctance, outside his own world, to make decisions; she had made so many for him, and her intolerance of most that he dared to contemplate himself had blanketed him with at least a vagueness and at most an obstinacy. Only in his own world was there freedom of mind and hand; and in that world he had been eager to imprison himself for such freedom. He had never bothered much about exterior events. He had found contentment within the circle of a few things he cared for, and outside it he walked as a child.