A POEM AMORY SENT TO ELEANOR AND WHICH HE CALLED "SUMMER STORM"

"Faint winds, and a song fading and leaves falling,
Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter...
And the rain and over the fields a voice calling...

Our gray blown cloud scurries and lifts above,
Slides on the sun and flutters there to waft her
Sisters on. The shadow of a dove
Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings;
And down the valley through the crying trees
The body of the darker storm flies; brings
With its new air the breath of sunken seas
And slender tenuous thunder...
But I wait...
Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain--
Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate,
Happier winds that pile her hair;
Again
They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air
Upon me, winds that I know, and storm.

There was a summer every rain was rare;
There was a season every wind was warm....
And now you pass me in the mist... your hair
Rain-blown about you, damp lips curved once more
In that wild irony, that gay despair
That made you old when we have met before;
Wraith-like you drift on out before the rain,
Across the fields, blown with the stemless flowers,
With your old hopes, dead leaves and loves again--
Dim as a dream and wan with all old hours
(Whispers will creep into the growing dark...
Tumult will die over the trees)
Now night
Tears from her wetted breast the splattered blouse
Of day, glides down the dreaming hills, tear-bright,
To cover with her hair the eerie green...
Love for the dusk... Love for the glistening after;
Quiet the trees to their last tops... serene...

Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter..."

CHAPTER 4. The Supercilious Sacrifice

Atlantic City. Amory paced the board walk at day's end, lulled by the
everlasting surge of changing waves, smelling the half-mournful odor of
the salt breeze. The sea, he thought, had treasured its memories deeper
than the faithless land. It seemed still to whisper of Norse galleys
ploughing the water world under raven-figured flags, of the British
dreadnoughts, gray bulwarks of civilization steaming up through the fog
of one dark July into the North Sea.

"Well--Amory Blaine!"

Amory looked down into the street below. A low racing car