of it and the rough of it, so
far as a man might who was past his physical best, and now he was back
again, more fit than when he went, but at this present moment breathless
at the realization that he had been up against life as it actually is,
and that he found it a brute business and hated it. And this was not so
much the horror of life in the field where, however the human heart
cried out against the argument of desecrated flesh, the spirit could
call mightily upon God, challenging Him to grant the chrism of
fulfilment in return for this wild sacrifice of blood, as the horror of
life when peace was exercising her rights in unbelievable ways. This he
was going to explain to Dick, if he could manage it, while he set forth
also his need of retreating from the active scene and leaving some of
his formerly accepted duties on Dick's shoulders. As he sat there,
gaunt, long, lean man, with a thin brown face and the eagle's look, a
fineness of aquiline curve that made him significant in a dominant type,
he fitted his room as the room fitted him. The house was old; nothing
had been changed in it since the year when, in his first-won prosperity,
he persuaded his mother up from the country and let her furnish it with
her shyly modest taste, a sense of values that bade her keep within the
boundary of the atmosphere she brought with her in good old pieces
tenderly used. The room was dim, even by day, from these shadows of the
brooding past, and the dull blue draperies at the windows, while they
touched it to a more inspiriting tone, still spoke softly of the repose
a man wanted when he escaped from the outer world to the assuagement of
silence and his books.

To-night, when Raven had just about come to the conclusion that he could
not possibly enter upon certain things with Dick because, although Dick
elected to be a poet, there was no recognized form of words that would
make him understand, and he'd better telephone him to put the interview
off, he heard his voice in the hall, and, answering it, even breaking
over it, like bright bubbles of a vocal stream, the voice of the girl
they both loved, in ways becoming to their differences. Raven drew a
comfortable breath. The intimate conference with Dick would have to be
deferred, though he would quite as willingly have had Nan listen to it,
except for the chance of her carrying it away with her, in that
sympathetic tenderness of hers, to burden her young heart. Nan would
have made qu