energy had expired in the Furnace,
it had seeped from him. It might be that he was only a sere husk, a dry
bundle of inhibitions, insensible to the green humanity of life.

"I couldn't go on my knees to anything," the younger took up his burden.
"Wrong or not it is the way I'm made. I'd not hang about where I wasn't
wanted. Although you mightn't think it. And I am sorry I came here. I do
things like that all the time; I mean I do, say, exactly the opposite of
what I plan. You'll think I am a braying ass, of course."

"Stop for a breath," Howat Penny recommended; "a breath, and a
cigarette." He extended his case; and, in place of taking a cigarette,
Polder examined the case resentfully. "There is it," he declared;
"correct, like all the rest of you. And it's only old leather. But mine
would be different. I could sink and Mariana wouldn't put out a hand
just on account of that. It's wrong," he insisted. Expressed in that
manner it did seem to Howat Penny a small reason for the withholding of
any paramount salvation. Yet, he told himself, he had no intention,
desire, to undertake the weight of any reformation. A futile effort, he
added, with his vague consciousness of implacable destiny, his dim sense
of man moved from without, in locked progression. Polder was young,
rebellious; but he could grow older; he would grow older and comprehend;
or else beat himself to death on obdurate circumstance. What concerned
Howat was the hope that Mariana would be no further involved in either
process. She too had this to learn--that, in the end, blood was stronger
than will; the dead were terribly potent. He had, even, no inclination
to say any of this to the man frowning in the dusk at his side. It would
be useless, a mere preaching. An expression, too, of a slight but actual
sympathy for James Polder would be misleading. In the main Howat was
entirely careless of what might happen to the other; it was only where,
unfortunately, he touched Mariana that he entered into the elder's
world. He would sacrifice him for Mariana in an instant. Polder rose.

"I must leave," he announced. Howat Penny expressed no regret, and the
other hesitated awkwardly. "It's no use!" he finally exclaimed. "I can't
reach you; as if one of us spoke Patagonian. Hellish, it seems to me."
He turned and disappeared, as violently as he had come, over the
obscurity of the lawn. A reddish, misshapen moon hung low in the sky,
and gave the aging man an extraordinarily