Between Friends

by Robert W. Chambers



1914




I

Like a man who reenters a closed and darkened house and lies down;
lying there, remains conscious of sunlight outside, of bird-calls,
and the breeze in the trees, so had Drene entered into the obscurity
of himself.

Through the chambers of his brain the twilit corridors where cringed
his bruised and disfigured soul, there nothing stirring except the
automatic pulses which never cease.

Sometimes, when the sky itself crashes earthward and the world lies
in ruins from horizon to horizon, life goes on.

The things that men live through--and live!

But no doubt Death was too busy elsewhere to attend to Drene.

He had become very lean by the time it was all over. Gray glinted