"He's rather the kind that marries the world." "Yes, I think so. We turn here to the house. Have you the time?" "It's almost noon." "He will be home, then. He works upon the farm as though he had eyes." They left the pebbly beach and went by the cedars up to the house. Tam came to meet them, and Linden rose from the bench upon the porch. VI "And so he was killed," said Curtin, speaking with strongly controlled emotion. "And I can tell you that when I heard it I felt physically that shock and crash and mortal bruising. It wasn't only my heart that was wounded. My nerves and my flesh felt it. Even now I think that there must be but one body--I got away for a time after he was buried. I went down to Hyères. I used to sit there by the sea. He was a lovable fellow, square as they make them. We were brothers and friends, too. Well, that is the way it runs! Life--death. Life--death! I would give a good deal--" He had been thirty-odd hours at Sweet Rocket. They had sent up mountain to Cliff, who took down to his camp news that he would be gone for some days. They had given him the room next to Linden, and he had become at once delightfully at home. When with Miss Darcy he had stepped upon the porch Linden had said: "Don't think you take me by surprise! I saw you in my looking-glass this morning!" "It is good to find you again, Linden! What do you mean by your looking-glass?" Linden laughed, his hands upon the old classmate's shoulders. "Only that I had been thinking of you. And the other night I was with you by the Sea of Azof. I thought, 'I should like to see him again!' And you know yourself that when you make a current boats appear upon it!" Now, as the four sat about the fire in the big parlor, before the lamp was lighted, he had been telling of the death of his brother, an aviator. There had followed silence; then, "Well, let us talk of something else!" said Curtin. He took up the pipe he had laid upon the hearth beside him, and raking out a coat from the fire, relit it. "What do you think is going to happen now, Linden?" They sat and talked, and the flames leaped, many and small, in the mahogany of the room. At ten they rose to separate for the night. "Come look at the sky," said Linden. "The first week in October, and diamond clear!" They went out to the porch, and then, so majestic was the night, to the sweep before the house, whence they might see the great expanse. It was very still. The river sounded, but the air rested a thin and moveless veil. It was not cold. Richard Linden stood bareheaded, his face uplifted to the vault that writes forever its runes before men.