smoked a pipe with Jerry and
thought intermittently, in the inmost cell of his most secret mind,
about the blessed beauties of things. Here they were all about him,
inherited treasures of memory, some of them homely and of little value,
many of them far less convenient than the appliances of the present day.
He even thought he recognized ancient utensils, as Charlotte washed
them, the great iron spider where crullers were fried--always with a few
cut in hands with straight fat fingers, to suit a boyish fancy--and the
colander he had once been found utilizing as a helmet in a play of
chivalry. Such smells came out of this kitchen, like no other smells in
any house he knew. The outlines of things, the tints of time and use!
There was the red door into the buttery, where once, when he was a
little boy, he had caught for a few minutes only an enchanting glow from
the setting sun. Sunrise and rubies and roses: none of them had ever
equaled the western light on the old red paint. Over and over again he
had tried to recall the magic, to set the door at the precise angle to
catch the level rays, but in vain. It was a moment of beauty, fleeting
as the sunset itself, and only to be found in the one permanence that is
memory. He remembered it now with a thousand other impressions as
lasting and as lost, and childhood and youth came alive in him and hurt
and helped him. Yes, this was home. In a hostile universe there was one
spot where he and the past could safely rest.

VIII

Raven went to sleep thinking simply about the house, while the fire
flickered down on the hearth and shadows all about the room flickered
with it and then went out. He always loved shadows, their beauties and
grotesqueries, and he was unfeignedly glad he had no scientific
understanding of them, why they played this way or that and translated
the substance that made them so delicately and sometimes with such an
adorable foolishness. He liked it better that way, liked to make out of
them a game of surprises and pretend they were in good form and doing
particularly well, or again far below their highest. And following his
childishly enchanting game he began to feel rather abashed over what had
brought him here. He was glad to have come. It was the only place for
him, disordered as he was, with its wholesome calm, and he wondered
further if the state of mind that had become habitual to him was now a
state of mind at all. Was it not rather a temporary dr