But sometime later, as he was dozing off, a sense of reassurance began filtering into his mind. After all, he was still Henry Devers, the same man who had left home eleven months ago, with a love for family and friends which was, if anything, stronger than before. Once he could communicate this, the strangeness would disappear and the First One would again become good old Hank. It was little enough to ask for--a return to old values, old relationships, the normalcies of the backwash instead of the freneticisms of the lime-light. It would certainly be granted to him. He slept. * * * * * Dinner was at seven P.M. His mother came; his Uncle Joe and Aunt Lucille came. Together with Edith, Ralphie and himself, they made six, and ate in the dining room at the big table. Before he'd become the First One, it would have been a noisy affair. His family had never been noted for a lack of ebullience, a lack of talkativeness, and Ralphie had always chosen mealtimes--especially with company present--to describe everything and anything that had happened to him during the day. And Edith herself had always chatted, especially with his mother, though they didn't agree about much. Still, it had been good-natured; the general tone of their lives had been good-natured. This wasn't good-natured. Exactly what it was he wasn't sure. "Stiff" was perhaps the word. They began with grapefruit, Edith and Mother serving quickly, efficiently from the kitchen, then sitting down at the table. He looked at Mother as he raised his first spoonful of chilled fruit, and said, "Younger than ever." It was nothing new; he'd said it many many times before, but his mother had always reacted with a bright smile and a quip something like, "Young for the Golden Age Center, you mean." This time she burst into tears. It shocked him. But what shocked him even more was the fact that no one looked up, commented, made any attempt to comfort her; no one indicated in any way that a woman was sobbing at the table. He was sitting directly across from Mother, and reached out and touched her left hand which lay limply beside the silverware. She didn't move it--she hadn't touched him once beyond that first, quick, strangely-cool embrace at the door--then a few seconds later she withdrew it and let it drop out of sight. So there he was, Henry Devers, at home with the family. So there he was, the hero returned, waiting to be treated as a human being.