ugh the night
which said that, though he was hidden from mortal vision, the memory of
him was still alive, imbued with an unquenchable vitality. His
unwinking eyes, with the rock crumbs sifting on them, looked at those
of his triumphant enemy and spoke through their dusted films. In the
moment of death they had said nothing to him, now they shone--not
angrily accusing as they had been in life--but stern with a vindictive
purpose.

Courant began to have a fearful understanding of their meaning. Though
dead to the rest of the world, David would maintain an intense and
secret life in his murderer's conscience. He had never fought such a
subtle and implacable foe, and he lay thinking of how he could create
conditions that would give him escape, push the phantom from him, make
him forget, and be as he had been when no one had disputed his
sovereignty over himself. He tried to think that time would mitigate
this haunting discomfort. His sense of guilt, his fear of his wife,
would die when the novelty of once again being one with the crowd had
worn away. It was not possible that he, defiant of man and God, could
languish under this dread of a midnight visitation or a discovery that
never would be made. It was the reentering into the communal life that
had upset his poise--or was it the influence of the woman, the softly
pervasive, enervating influence? He came up against this thought with
a dizzying impact and felt himself droop and sicken as one who is faced
with a task for which his strength is inadequate.

He turned stealthily and lay on his back, his face beaded with sweat.
The girl beside him waked and sat up casting a side glance at him. By
the starlight, slanting in through the raised tent door, she saw his
opened eyes and, leaning toward him, a black shape against the faintly
blue triangle, said:

"Low, are you awake?"

He answered without moving, glad to hear her speak, to know that sleep
had left her and her voice might conjure away his black imaginings.

"Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked. "You must be half dead after
such work as you did today."

"I was thinking--" then hastily, for he was afraid that she might sense
his mood and ply him with sympathetic queries: "Sometimes people are
too tired to sleep. I am, and so I was lying here just thinking of
nothing."

His fears were unnecessary. She was as healthily oblivious of his
disturbance as he was morbidly conscious of it. She sat still, he