The following day, they voluntarily returned to their mush and milk, for
they had eaten too much jam, and, having been very ill in the night,
considered it sufficient evidence that their penance was not yet over.






XVIII

"LESS THAN THE DUST"

The heat of August shimmered over the land, and still, to every inquiry
at the door or telephone, the quiet young woman in blue and white said:
"No change." Allison was listless and apathetic, yet comparatively free
from pain.

Life, for him, had ebbed back to the point where the tide must either
cease or turn. He knew neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness; only the
great pause of soul and body, the sense of the ultimate goal.

One by one, he meditated upon the things he used to care for. Isabel
came first, but her youth and beauty had ceased to trouble or to beckon.
His father had gone on ahead. The delusion still persisted, but he spoke
of it no more. Even the violin did not matter now. He remembered the
endless hours he had spent at work, almost every day of his life for
years, and to what end? In an instant, it had been rendered empty,
purposeless, and vain--like life itself.