blue the rustling trees.

"You know," whispered Tom, "what we feel now is the sense of all the
gorgeous youth that has rioted through here in two hundred years."

A last burst of singing flooded up from Blair Arch--broken voices for
some long parting.

"And what we leave here is more than this class; it's the whole heritage
of youth. We're just one generation--we're breaking all the links that
seemed to bind us here to top-booted and high-stocked generations. We've
walked arm and arm with Burr and Light-Horse Harry Lee through half
these deep-blue nights."

"That's what they are," Tom tangented off, "deep blue--a bit of color
would spoil them, make them exotic. Spires, against a sky that's
a promise of dawn, and blue light on the slate roofs--it hurts...
rather--"

"Good-by, Aaron Burr," Amory called toward deserted Nassau Hall, "you
and I knew strange corners of life."

His voice echoed in the stillness.

"The torches are out," whispered Tom. "Ah, Messalina, the long shadows
are building minarets on the stadium--"

For an instant the voices of freshman year surged around them and then
they looked at each other with faint tears in their eyes.

"Damn!"

"Damn!"

The last light fades and drifts across the land--the low, long land, the
sunny land of spires; the ghosts of evening tune again their lyres and
wander singing in a plaintive band down the long corridors of trees;
pale fires echo the night from tower top to tower: Oh, sleep that
dreams, and dream that never tires, press from the petals of the lotus
flower something of this to keep, the essence of an hour.

No more to wait the twilight of the moon in this sequestered vale of
star and spire, for one eternal morning of desire passes to time and
earthy afternoon. Here, Heraclitus, did you find in fire and shifting
things the prophecy you hurled down the dead years; this midnight
my desire will see, shadowed among the embers, furled in flame, the
splendor and the sadness of the world.

INTERLUDE

May, 1917-February, 1919

A letter dated January, 1918, written by Monsignor Darcy to Amory, who
is a second lieutenant in the 171st Infantry, Port of Embarkation, Camp
Mills, Long Island.

MY DEAR BOY:

All you need tell me of yourself is that you still are; for the rest I
merely search back in a restive memory, a thermometer that records only
fevers, and match you with what I was at your age. But men will chatter
and you and I will still sh