is," he said. Then he announced his intention of going up-stairs to take
a nap. He wasn't going to the hospital until eleven.

He did go up to his room and lay down upon his bed and, eventually, he
slept. But for an hour, his mind raced like an idle motor. That nonsense
of Lucile's about Portia Stanton's folly in marrying a young musician
whose big Italian eyes would presently begin looking soulfully at some
one else. Had they already looked like that at Paula? Jealousy itself
wasn't a base emotion. Betraying it was all that mattered. You couldn't
help feeling it for any one you loved. Paula, bending over that furry
faun-like head, reading off the same score with him, responding to the
same emotions from the music.... Fantastic, of course. There could be no
sane doubt as to who it was that Paula was in love with. That embrace of
hers, just now. Curious how it terrified him. He had felt like a mouse
under the soft paw of a cat. An odd symptom of fatigue.

What a curious thing life was. How widely it departed from the
traditional patterns. Here in his own case, that Fate should save the one
real passion of his life for the Indian summer of it. And that it should
be a reciprocated passion. The wiseacres were smiling at him, he
supposed; smiling as the world always smiled at the spectacle of
infatuate age mating with tolerant, indifferently acquiescent youth.
Smiled and wondered how long it would be before youth awoke and turned to
its own. Well, he could afford to smile at the wiseacres. And at the
green inexperienced young, as well, who thought that love was exclusively
their affair--children the age of Mary taking their sentimental thrills
so seriously!

Four years now he had been married to Paula and the thing had never
chilled,--never gone stale. How different from the love of his youth that