What, in the short
passage from the automobile to the house, could have so wholly changed,
frozen, her? Had she, at that late opportunity, remembering the
struggle, the tragic unrelenting need, to keep herself aloof from
passion, once more successfully fled? Was she--he was almost dozing--
Cytherea, the unobtainable?
He woke, stirred, convulsively: it was after one o'clock now. The
craving for a cigarette finally moved him; and, in the dark, he felt
around for those, the Dimitrinos, on the tray. The cigarette at an end,
he sank back on the pillows, deciding that he must take the earliest
train possible toward Eastlake. He had missed a directors' meeting
today, and there was another tomorrow that he must attend, at his
office. Then he grew quieter; the rasping of his nerves ceased; it was
as though, suddenly, they had all been loosened, the strung wires
unturned. What a remarkable adventure he had been through; not a detail
of it would ever fade from his memory--a secret alleviation for
advancing old age, impotence. And this, the most romantic occurrence of
his life, had happened when he was middle-aged, forty-seven and worse,
to be exact. He looked again at his watch, but now only from a
lingering uncertain curiosity. It was five minutes of two.
The present peace that settled over him seemed the most valuable thing
life had to offer; it was not like the end of effort, but resembled a
welcome truce, a rest with his force unimpaired, from which he would
wake to the tonic winter realities of tomorrow.
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