along the beach at Venice, wading out and diving under the breakers
just as they combed for the booming lunge against the sand cluttered
with humanity at play. He had blandly expected to go on playing there
whenever the mood and the bunch invited. Night before last he had
danced--and he had drunk much wine, and had made impulsive love to a
girl he had never seen in his life until just before he had held her
in his arms as they went swaying and gliding and dipping together
across the polished floor, carefree as the gulls outside on the sand.
Night before last he had driven home--but he winced there, and pulled
his thoughts back from that drive.

Here were no girls to listen to foolish speeches; no wine, no music,
no boom of breakers, no gulls. There never would be any. He was as far
from all that as though he had taken flight to the moon. There was no
sound save the whispering rush of the wind that blew over the bare
mountain top. He was above the pines and he could only faintly hear
the murmur of their branches. Below him the world lay hushed, silent
with the silence of far distances. The shadows that lay on the slope
and far canyons moved like ghosts across the tumbled wilderness.

For a minute the immensity of silence and blue distance lulled his
thoughts again with the feeling of security and peace. He breathed
deep, his nostrils flared like a thoroughbred horse, his face turned
this way and that, his eyes drinking deep, satisfying draughts of a
beauty such as he had never before known. His lips were parted a
little, half smiling at the wonderful kindness of fate, that had
picked him up and set him away up here at the top o' the world.

He glanced downward, to his right. There went two objects--three, he
counted them a moment later. He stepped inside, snatched up the