. The sight stirred
him strangely, as if the memory of his dead life had been awakened by a
scent or a faded flower in a book. How different he was from the boy
Margaret had known in that primitive period which people defined as
"before the war"! It was as if he had belonged then to some primary
emotional stratum of life. All the complex forces, the play and
interplay of desire and repulsion, of energy and lassitude, had
developed in the last two or three years.

On either side, softly shaded lights were shining from the windows, and
women, in rich furs, were getting out of luxurious cars. It was the
world that Stephen knew; life moulded in sculptural forms and encrusted
with the delicate patina of tradition. Here was all that he had once
loved; yet he realized suddenly, with a sensation of loneliness, that
here, not in the mean streets, he felt, as Vetch would have said,
"stranger than Robinson Crusoe." Something was missing. Something was
lost that he could never recover. Was it Vetch, after all, who had shown
him the way out, who had knocked a hole in the wall?

When Darrow stopped the car before the Culpeper gate, Stephen turned and
held out his hand. "Thank you," he said simply. "I shall see you again."

Crossing the pavement with a rapid step, he entered the gate and ran up
the steps to the porch between the white columns. As he passed into the
richly tempered glow of the hall, it seemed to him that an invisible
force, an aroma of the past, drifted out of the old house and enveloped
him like the sweetness of flowers. He was caught again, he was
submerged, in the spirit of race.

A little later, when he was passing his mother's door, he glanced in and
saw her standing before the mirror in her evening gown of gray silk,
with the foam-like ruffles of rose-point on her bosom and at her elbows,
which were still round and young looking.

Catching his reflection in the glass, she called out in her crisp tones,
"My dear boy, where on earth have you been? You know we promised to dine
with Julia, and then to go to those tableaux for the benefit of the
children in Vienna. She has worked so hard to make them a success that
she would never forgive us if we stayed away."

"Yes, I know. I had forgotten," he replied. Why was he always
forgetting? Then he asked impulsively, while pity burned at white heat
within him, "Is Father here? I want to speak to him before we go out."

"He came in an hour ago," said Mrs. Culpeper; an