“Go to bed,” said the story-writer, suddenly. “You’ll find the guest room on the top floor. I’m going to get to work on my South Sea story. I’ll call you up for coffee in the morning.” He took his feet down from the typewriter desk and threw away his cigarette. His hands hovered over the keyboard and already he had forgotten the outer world, including his guest, who rose and wandered uncertainly from the room. _III. The Ivory Gate._ He found the guest room upstairs. But whether it was the faint clicking of the typewriter below that disturbed him, or his own thoughts, he was disinclined to sleep. There was a pile of magazines on the table, and he began to read a story. It was the kind of story he had been fond of all his life, an adventure and a strange meeting with a beautiful girl. But he let the magazine slip to the floor. He was thinking of old times in San Francisco. He remembered that he had wanted to build a boat and sail to the South Seas. “But I didn’t!” he said to himself triumphantly. No--a mocking thought came to remind him--he had stayed on shore and listened to café yarns. But since then he had been sensible. He had been sensible for twelve years. Twelve years! In a sudden panic he wondered if his youth had slipped by and vanished with those years. He went over and gazed at himself in the mirror. He saw a man in the prime of life, strong and clear-eyed. He did not want to go to bed; but perhaps a walk to the club would make him sleepy. He debated whether to disturb the man at work below to tell him, and decided he would not. He went downstairs quietly. On the second floor he looked out to reassure himself as to the weather. The sky was a little cloudy, that was all. And then, as he stood there looking out of the hall window, he saw below him a little garden in the moonlight. He looked away quickly, but not in time, for he remembered a moonlit garden perched on one of the hills of San Francisco, where as a young man he had walked night after night dreaming impossible things. That memory was painful, and he hurried downstairs and took his hat to leave the house. But the pain of that memory was strangely sweet and afflicted him with a kind of nostalgia. He wanted to go out into this garden and be again the young fool he had been. He walked up and down the hall with his hat in his hand, wanting to go away and wanting to stay and dream in this garden. It was a queer thing. He had stopped drinking, and he had stopped dreaming, years ago; the desire for drink had never come back, but the desire for dreaming was upon him again. He felt that his whole life of triumphant common sense was at stake. But no, it couldn’t be. An hour in a moonlit garden could not undo the solid achievement of twelve years. He put his hat back on the stand. With a guilty feeling of having yielded to a weakness, he went quietly out, past the door from behind which came the inspired click of typewriter keys fashioning some strange adventure.