as naturally as the earth greets the sun step forth upon the stage
to continue or to end his brief part in the long drama of destiny.

The horizon had hardly begun to turn red when a young man,
stretched on his bed by an open window, awoke from troubled sleep.
He lay for a few moments without moving, then he sat up on the edge
of the bed. His hands rested listlessly on his kneecaps and his
eyes were fixed on the sky-line crimsoning above his distant woods.

After a while he went over and sat at one of the windows, his eyes
still fixed on the path of the coming sun; and a great tragedy of
men sat there within him: the tragedy that has wandered long and
that wanders ever, showing its face in all lands, retaining its
youth in all ages; the tragedy of love that heeds not law, and the
tragedy of law forever punishing heedless love.

Gradually the sounds of life began. From the shrubs under his
window, from the orchard and the wet weeds of fence corners, the
birds reentered upon their lives. Far off in the meadows the
cattle rose from their warm dry places, stretched themselves and
awoke the echoes of the wide rolling land with peaceful lowing. A
brood mare in a grazing lot sent forth her quick nostril call to
the foal capering too wildly about her, and nozzled it with
rebuking affection. On the rosy hillsides white lambs were leaping
and bleating, or running down out of sight under the white sea-fog
of the valleys. A milk cart rattled along the turnpike toward the
town.

It had become broad day.