The instant is gone. Painfully with my swollen ankle, I make a way from the bed to where, under the door of the living room, I see the tip of the paper. I knew then how I had marched that night through the bleak field, away from the limekiln which lived in it like a sultry evil eye: how I had reached a suburb where the houses stood soiled between the night and the day, and how a cab had taken me home. The black letters spoke to me: MR. AND MRS. CLAYTON MARK DIE IN STRANGE MOTOR MISHAP ---------- L. I. Garage Man Held ---------- Well-Known Society Leaders Crushed to Death as Front Wheel Flies Off ---------- Only Son is Dr. John Mark of Institute Well, John Mark, here is fact, whatever truth lie under. Mother and father are dead. You’ll no more see them. They are bodies arrogantly aloof from your erectness, from the touch of your longing. The white head man who said: “I am your slave” ... that’s a fact, too ... doomed the car that slew your mother and your father. You possess half a million ... a fact! ... and you love Mildred, you can marry Mildred. Is that the truth? Philip LaMotte is dead. The white head man who said: “I am your slave,” rose ... you saw how he rises ... rose above Philip LaMotte and with your surgeon’s science struck him dead. Philip LaMotte dead, your mother and your father dead: --I can marry Mildred? ... “A little truth. For God’s sake, now, a little truth to season all these facts. Else they’ll stink in your flesh, John Mark: they’ll rot your soul, John Mark. A little truth.” How strange that I lie bearably in bed! Pleasantly. That ankle is a blessing. No fracture. I diagnose a strain and a bruise. A fortnight’s rest will doctor it as well as any doctor. A fortnight’s meditation will doctor my mind and my soul. For they are sore in need of healing. --Truth, to ease the chaos of these maddening facts: truth that is harmony like this which holds my body, all of its stress and thrust, to the balance of health! * * * * * But first there is the funeral to go to. The ankle’s an excuse to free you of that. No: be borne in your royal litter, wounded but heir to half a million dollars: borne to the laying away of your slain parents. That is a privilege too rarely human to be missed by you. Such a son, such loving parents: and the muffled friends, looking with veiled envy at your devotion. _b_ The day of the funeral was a bright laughter. Sun sent its golden peals across the sky that warmed and opened like a wanton girl. The stones of the city as we passed were a half liquid substance, laved and entered and absorbed by the May morning. Asphalt, men and women drab-clothed walking, the strew of wagons and the loom of houses ... all was a texture of imprisoned light. I felt how all this various matter was a whirl, crystallized and bound, of luminous electrons: how all of it was one with the sun’s steep pour and with the sudden jet of my own mind merging with it.