Doctor Stein sits low in an easy chair with his hands clasped on his knees and listens smiling to the comfortable converse of my mother. My father leans back: he is enjoying his cigar, and his attention is equal between the heavy rings of smoke that he blows high, and the pleasant words of his wife. Mr. Fayn touches a pensive finger to his brow between each upturn of a card. He is very serious, and unmindful of the talk and of the music. Mildred sings and ceases: her smile wreathes a balance between us. She sings again. Doctor Stein’s eyes twinkle at the complacence of my mother’s words. My father’s eyes glaze a bit as if the warm lull of the room rocked him toward sleep. Mr. Fayn mixes his cards noiselessly, and lays them out in silence: his feet tap in a toy excitement as the game goes on. We are at peace and warm: Mildred like a green fountain, sends verdure and dance quietly down the room. Philip and I, knowing each other, quaff her loveliness. We have enough: we are tortured by no passion. From her fingers, from her throat, love jets a cool source into our lives. And beyond our eager youth sits the maturity of the others: ironic in Doctor Stein, complacent in my mother, dully sensual in my father, childishly earnest in Mr. Fayn. Mother sends a word, from time to time: “Mildred, that is a pretty tune. What is it?...” and waits for no answer, remembering some nothing to tell the Doctor. Father frowns, turned desultorily in our direction: but a thick puff of smoke clouds out the frown and he is once more at ease in his flat nirvana. Mildred sings: “The winds all silent are, And Phœbus in his chair Ensaffroning sea and air Makes vanish every star: Night like a drunkard reels Beyond the hills to shun his flaming wheels: The fields with flowers are deck’d in every hue, The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue; Here is a pleasant place-- And nothing wanting is, save She, alas!” “But here the place is better than your song’s. For She is here.” Mildred laughs at my words. “What has this place to do with the song? That is dawn. This is night.” “Perhaps the dawn is coming,” Philip says. “It is less rare than she. And she is already here.” “Yes,” he goes on. “Dawn must come where She is.” “Dawn,” I say, “will be wonderful up here.” “It will be perpendicular.... Shot up like a flaming arrow from below.” “And we will watch it fly up toward us, till it kindles the house!” Mildred claps her hands, letting her guitar lie in her lap. “But,” Philip says, “what will become of the night?” “The night is the black deep wine in which we have drunk.” “Day will drink of it, and drink it up, and be drunk.” Mildred laughs at Philip. “Day will dance,” says Philip, “on the mountain top.” “Mildred,” I turn to her, “you ought to know. For you are like the day standing upon the tip of the night, and peering down on us.” “Oh, you two, with your fanciful prose! I have to take refuge in music ... matter-of-fact music.”