When they had undressed Jason and covered him up warmly, Dorinda brought the eggnog, and Mirandy slipped her arm under the pillow and raised his head while he drank it. The tormented look had gone from his face. About his mouth the outline of a smile flickered. "It feels good," he said, and closed his eyes as the glass was taken away. "You'll eat some supper?" "Yes, I'll eat some supper." "You're not in pain now?" "No, I'm not in pain now." He spoke in a dazed way, like a child that is repeating words it does not understand. Had he forgotten that he had known her? Or had he reached the depths from which all memories appear as frail as the bloom on a tree? She did not know. She would never know probably. She had lost even the wish to know. Whether he had loved her or not made no difference. It made no difference whether or not he remembered. In that instant beside the poorhouse wall, the old Jason had been submerged and lost in this new Jason who was a stranger. Not in thirty years but in a single minute, she had lost him. Stripped of associations, stripped of sentiment, this new Jason was protected only by the intolerable pathos of life. How futile, how unnecessary, it had all been,--her love, her suffering, her bitterness. He opened his eyes and looked at her. "This isn't Five Oaks?" "No, it is Old Farm." "Old Farm? That is the Oakley place. Am I going to stay here?" "Until you are better." "Until I am better," he repeated. "Are you comfortable now?" He closed his eyes again. "Yes, it feels good." "In a little while I'll give you some veronal and you will sleep." A change passed over his face and he sighed, "I'd like to sleep." She drew back and turned to go out of the room. Yes, the connection between youth and middle age was broken for ever. X In the night she heard him coughing, and slipping into her flannel wrapper, she went into the kitchen and beat up an egg with milk and brandy. When she took it into his room, he appeared feverish and asked for veronal. "But the brandy will undo it," he added mechanically. His face was flushed and when she touched his hand it was burning. "Is it near day?" he inquired. "No, it is only one o'clock. I thought you were sleeping." "I was, but I wake up this way. I've done it every night for months." She gave him veronal, and then raised his head while he sipped the eggnog. "An owl has been hooting so loud I thought it was at the window," he said, looking up at her over the rim of the glass. "It's up in the big pine. You've been dreaming." The fire had burned down to a few embers, which flickered out when she tried to stir them to life. A dim light from the screened lamp on the floor behind the chintz-covered chair left the bed and his uncovered face in shadow. "Do you feel better?" she asked, as she was turning away. "Yes, I feel better." His eyes followed her from the shadow with a glance of mute interrogation.