a great yearning toward all
this well-ordered sanity. He had fancied that he would be overwhelmed
with memories, with regrets, with futile tears. But he knew now that
even if it were possible to re-enter the world in which he had once
moved he would refuse scornfully. Was it always so with those who
achieved death? Ah yes, death was the great progression, one never
re-entered the circle of life one quitted. Dead, quite dead! Or, as
Storch put it, "A field freshly broken to the plow!" A field awaiting
the eternal upspringing and the inevitable harvest... And so on, again
and again, to the end of time!

He came out of his musings with a renewed sense of faintness and the
realization that the street was rapidly being emptied of its throng. A
few stragglers hurried toward the ferry. He roused himself. A
green-gold light was enlivening the west and giving a ghostly
unreality to the street lamps twinkling in a premature blossoming.

He was turning to go when he saw a familiar figure coming up the
street. He looked twice to assure himself that he was not mistaken. It
was Brauer!

He stood a moment longer, roused to indifferent curiosity, but, as
Brauer brushed close, a sudden malevolent hatred shook him. He squared
himself and said in a hoarse tone:

"I'm starving... I want money ... to eat!" Brauer turned a face of
amazed and insolent incredulity toward Fred.

"Well, you won't get it from me!" he flung back.

Fred Starratt grasped Brauer's puny wrist in a ferocious grip.

"Oh yes, I will... Do you know who I am?"

"You? ... No... Let me go; you're hurting me!"

"Look at me closely!"

"I tell you I don't know you. Are you crazy?"

"Perhaps... I've been in an insane asylum... Now do you know who I
am?"

Brauer fell back. "No," he breathed: "it can't be possible! Fred
Starratt is dead."

Fred began to laugh. "You're right. But I want something to eat just
the same. You're going to take me into Hjul's ... and buy me a meal.
... And after I've eaten perhaps you'll hear how I died and who killed
me."

He could feel Brauer trembling in his grasp. A rising cruelty
overwhelmed him. He flung Brauer from him with a gesture of contempt.

"Are we going to eat?" he asked, coldly.

"Yes ... whatever you say."

Fred nodded and together the two drifted down Montgomery Street.

Sitting over a generous platter of pot roast and spaghetti at Hjul's,
with Brauer's pallid face staring up at him, Fred Starratt had the
realiz