might put their weapons into use at any moment. And he, the ardent
participant in all the bloody deeds of Siegfried and Dietrich and
Kriemhild, he, the passionate hunter of big game on five continents,
became so nervous that nothing but fear of his father kept him from
burying his head in his mother's lap in order not to see any more. When,
at last, a shot rang out on the stage, even that fear could no longer
restrain him, and there was nothing for his mother to do but to escort
him out of the box into the corridor. There, under the care of a
friendly doorkeeper who treated him to candy out of a paper bag, he
stayed in perfect contentment until his parents were ready to go home.

"Oh, we must go again, Carl," he heard his mother cry in a tone of high
exultation.

"All right, you go," said the father with a yawn, Keith and I don't
care--do we, Keith?"

"No," Keith replied mechanically, but even as he spoke he became
conscious of a desire to share his mother's enthusiasm rather than his
father's indifference. If they would only promise not to shoot! ...



XVII

Three years he remained in the school of the Misses Ahlberg. Three times
fall and winter and spring were followed by that painfully delicious
period of almost unbroken daylight, when the very books seemed to lose
some of their magic, when even the air of the old lane became fraught
with some mystic urge, and when life within stone walls turned into an