, old man."

XII

He was not given much to reading, but when Martin left the cottage and
stood out in the liquid silver of the moon under the vast dome which
dazzled with stars, and he caught the flash of fireflies among the
undergrowth that were like the lanterns of the fairies a line came into
his mind that he liked and repeated several times, rather whimsically
pleased with himself for having found it at exactly the right moment.
It was "the witching hour of night."

He remained on top of the incline for a little while, moved to that
spirit of the realization of God which touches the souls of sensitive
men when they are awed by the wonder and the beauty of the earth. He
stood quite still, disembodied for the moment, uplifted, stirred, with
all the scents and all the whisperings about him, humble, childlike,
able, in that brief flight of ecstasy, to understand the language of
another world.

And then the stillness was suddenly cut by a scream of vacuous
laughter, probably that of an exuberant Irish maid-servant, to whom
silences are made to break, carrying on, most likely, a rough
flirtation with a chauffeur.

It brought Martin back to earth like the stick of a rocket. But he
didn't go down immediately to the water. He sat there and nursed his
knees and began to think. Whether it was Howard's unexpected talk of
Plattsburg and of being made something of or not he didn't know. What
he did know was that he was suddenly filled with a sort of fright....
"Good God," he said to himself, "time's rushing away, and I'm nearly
twenty-six. I'm as old as some men who have done things and made things
and are planted on their feet. What have I done? What am I fit to do?
Nearly twenty-six and I'm still playing games like a schoolboy!...
What's my father saying? 'We count it death to falter not to die' ...
I've been faltering--and before I know anything about it I shall be
thirty--half-time.... This can't go on. This waiting for Joan is
faltering. If she's not coming to me I must go to her. If it's not
coming right it must end and I must get mended and begin again. I can't
stand in father's shoes with all he worked to make in my hands like
ripe plums. It isn't fair, or straight. I must push up a rung and carry
things on for him. Could I look him in the face having slacked? My God,
I wish I'd watched the time rush by! I'm nearly twenty-six ...
Joan--to-morrow. That's the thing to do." He got up and strode quickly
down to