weakens, doesn't it, no matter what the will may be?" He lifted his
wine-glass. "I am afraid I am giving you a very dull evening, my
dear fellow," he apologized. "Forgive me! We will talk of more
pleasant things. I drink wine with you! How is Cecil? Doing well
with her painting?"

Adrian attempted to relax his own inner grimness. He responded to
his uncle's toast. But he wished this old man, so very near the
mysterious crisis of his affairs, would begin to forego to some
extent the habit of a lifetime, become a little more human. This
ridiculous "façade"! The dinner progressed.

Through an open window the night, full of soft, distant sound, made
itself felt once more. The candles, under their red shades,
flickered at intervals. The noiseless butler came and went. How old
his uncle was getting to look, Adrian reflected. There was a
grayness about his cheeks; fine, wire-like lines about his mouth.
And he was falling into that sure sign of age, a vacant
absent-mindedness. Half the time he was not listening to what he,
Adrian, was saying; instead, his eyes sought constantly the shadows
over the carved sideboard across the table from him. What did he see
there? What question was he asking? Adrian wondered. Only once was
his uncle very much interested, and that was when Adrian had spoken
of the war and the psychology left in its train. Adrian himself had
not long before been released from a weary round of training-camps,
where, in Texas dust, or the unpleasant resinous summer of the South,
he had gone through a repetition that in the end had threatened to
render him an imbecile. He was not illusioned. As separate
personalities, men had lost much of their glamour for him; there had
been too much sweat, too much crowding, too much invasion of dignity,