d her cloak. He was on his feet in a moment, as if to find
it--then he stopped short, and sank slowly back upon the bed.

He drew up his feet under him, and buried his head in his arms. His
brain was full of changing, hurrying visions, of storm and death, of
human beings helpless in a universe coldly and indifferently ruled by a
will that knows no pity.

Then for the first time it was as if he lifted up his head against
Heaven itself and cried: "There is no sense in all this. I will not bear
it."

Later in the night, when he found himself mechanically folding his hands
for the evening prayer he had learnt to say as a child, he suddenly
burst out laughing, and clenched his fists, and cried aloud: "No, no,
no--never--never again."

Once more it came to him that there was something in God like the
schoolmaster--He took the side of those who were well off already. "Yes,
they who have parents and home and brothers and sisters and worldly
goods--them I protect and care for. But here's a boy alone in the world,
struggling and fighting his way on as best he can--from him I will
take the only thing he has. That boy is nothing to any one. Let him be
punished because he is poor, and cast down to the earth, for there is
none to care for him. That boy is nothing to any one--nothing." Oh, oh,
oh!--he clenched his fists and beat them against the wall.

His whole little world was broken to pieces. Either God did not exist at
all, or He was cold and pitiless--one way of it was as bad as the other.
The heavenly country dissolved into cloud and melted away, and above
was nothing but empty space. No more folding of your hands, like a fool!
Walk on the earth, and lift up your head, and defy Heaven and fate,
as you defied the schoolmaster. Your mother has no need of you to save
her--she is not anywhere any more. She is dead--dead and turned to clay;
and more than that there is not, for her or for you or any other being
in this world.

Still he lay there. He would fain have slept, but seemed instead to sink
into a vague far-away twilight that rocked him--rocked him on its dark
and golden waves. And now he heard a sound--what was it? A violin. "The
mighty host in white array." Louise--is it you--and playing? He could
see her now, out there in the twilight. How pale she was! But still she
played. And now he understood what that twilight was.

It was a world beyond the consciousness of daily life--and that
world belonged to him. "Peer, l