Logan's face wore a noble gathering serenity. He was too weak to talk much, and only wanted Mendel to hold his hand and to talk to him about art, about pictures "they" were going to paint, and about pictures they had both loved: Cranach, Dürer, Uccello, Giotto, Blake, Cézanne. "Good men, those," said Logan. "Good company." "Good, decent, quiet little men." "We shall do good things." His hand closed more tightly on Mendel's, who surrendered himself to the force of the ebb in his friend, felt the cold, salt waves of death close about him and drag him out, out until Logan was lost, and with a frightful wrench all that was dead in himself was torn away, and he was left prostrate upon the fringes of his life. . . . He became conscious to find himself leaning over Logan, gazing at his lips, with his own lips near them, waiting for the breath that would come no more. It was finished. Logan had made an end. Turning away, Mendel saw through the window the lovely grey-blue sky, fleecy with mauve-grey clouds heaped up by the driving wind--beautiful, beautiful. . . . X PASSOVER IT was many days before Mendel could take up his work again. His mind simply could not express itself in paint. His first clear thought as he emerged from the numbness of the crisis was for Morrison, and to her he wrote, telling her what had happened, describing in minute detail his experience in the hospital, and adding that he was without the least wish to see her, and would write to her if his life ever became again what it had been before Logan's violent end. It seemed to him that Logan had claimed him, that he was destined to go through life with Logan, a dead man, for sole companion, and always behind Logan was the ominous and dreadful shadow of Oliver, from whom he had thought to escape those many months ago. His isolation was complete. It seemed that he had not a friend in the world, and there was not a soul towards whom he could move or wished to move. He could only rake over the ashes of the dead past and marvel that there had ever been a flame stirring in them. And as he raked them, he thrust into them much that only a short while ago had been living and delightful. What had happened? Youth could not be gone while he was yet so young, but he felt immeasurably old, and, in his worst condition, outside Time, which took shape as a stream flowing past him, bearing with it all his dreams, loves, aspirations, hopes, thoughts. When he tried to cast himself into it, to rescue these treasured possessions, he was clutched back, thrown down, and left prostrate with his eyes darkened and the smell of death in his nostrils. Sometimes he thought with terror that he had plunged too far, had given too much to Logan, had committed some obscure blasphemy, had been perhaps "overseen" even in that moment when the weakness and all that was dead in him had been wrenched away. And he said to himself:--