leep, and he found himself once more looking out of his eyes and
occupying his clothes. His attitude remained unchanged except for a
quickened movement of his fingers. Life returned to him as gently as it
had left. The stars were still high over his head and the night, cool
and murmuring, waited for him.

He lowered his eyes toward the street beyond the lawn. People were
straying by, seeming to drift under the dark trees. He could not see
them distinctly, but he stared at their flowing outlines and at moments
was rewarded by a glimpse of a face--a featureless little glint of white
in the shadows: dark shadows moving within a motionless darkness with
little dying candle-flame faces. "Men and women," he thought, "men and
women, mixed up in the night ... mixed up."

As he stared, thoughts as dim and fluid as the people in the street
moved in his head. But he remembered things best not in words. His
memories were little warmths that dropped into his heart. His cold thin
fingers continued their fluttering. "Mixed up, mixed up," said the
night. "Dark," said the shadows. And the years spoke their memories. "We
have been; we are no more." Memories that had lost the bloom of words.
The emaciated lips of the old man held a smile beneath the white beard.

This was Isaac Dorn, still alive after eighty years.

The music from the house ended and a woman's voice called through an
open window.

"I'm afraid it's chilly outside, father."

He offered no answer. Then he heard Erik, his son, speak in an amused
voice.

"Leave the old man be. He's making love to the stars."

"I'll get him a blanket," said Erik's wife. "I can't bear to think of
him catching cold."

Isaac Dorn arose from his chair, shaking his head. He did not fancy
being covered with a blanket and feeling Anna's kindly hands tucking its
edges around his feet. They were too kindly, too solicitous. Their
little pats and caressings presumed too much. One grew sad under their
ministrations and murmured to oneself, "Poor child, poor child." Better
a half-hour under the cold, amused eyes of his son, Erik. There was
something between Erik and him, something like an unspoken argument. To
Anna he was a pathetic little old man to be nursed, coddled, defended
against chills and indigestions, "poor child, poor child." But Erik
looked at him with cold, amused eyes that offered no quarter to age and
asked for nothing. Good Erik, who asked for nothing, whose eyes smiled
because th