Oh, yes, he remembered. They were due at a rehearsal of the school-play--Helen’s play--the one they had worked out together. What fun it was to have her bring him her little experiments in writing! He began to think that perhaps she might have a little real talent. Of course most of what she set down was merely a copy of what she had read, but every once in a while there was a nugget, something she had really seen or felt. This, for instance, which he had found scrawled across the fly-leaf of her arithmetic--poor Helen and her hated arithmetic! “The measured beats of the old clock Bring peace to my heart And quiet to my mind.” That was the real thing, a genuine expression of her own personality. How different from the personality of her mother, to whom the ticking of a clock could scarcely be anything but a trumpet-call to action. Different from her father’s personality too. The clock always said to him, “But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near....” Ah, what a second-rater he was! How he always thought of everything in terms of what somebody else had said! In earlier days when he was a boy and still thought he might perhaps amount to something this had been an affliction to him, a secret shame. But now he did not grieve over it. Since he had died and come back to this other life, he took everything and himself, too, more simply, with little concern for the presentability of the rôle he was to play. If, honestly, that was the sort of nature he had, why rebel against it? The only people who got anywhere by rebelling were rebels to begin with. And he was not. Why wasn’t it enough, anyhow, to love the beauties other men had created? He heard Stephen come back into the kitchen. He had been gone quite a while after that toy. “Father,” said Stephen softly, behind him. Lester started at the color of the little voice. There was something queer about it. Cautiously, with his ever-present dread of intruding, he glanced at Stephen not curiously, but with a casual air. The little boy came up to his chair and stood there, looking up at him with a strange expression of shining-quiet in his eyes. He had evidently been crying hard, for his cheeks were covered with the smeary marks of black where he had wiped off the tears with his dirty hands. But what on earth could he have been crying about? There had not been a sound. And he did not look like a child who has been crying. He looked ... he was smiling now ... he looked like a little golden seraph hovering around the golden gates. “Father,” said Stephen in a small, clear voice. He hesitated, evidently trying to think of something to say, his shining eyes fixed on his father’s. Finally he brought out, “Wouldn’t you like me to bring you a drink of water?” His smile, as he said this, was dazzling, his voice sweet, sweet with loving-kindness. “Why, yes, Stevie,” said his father over a lump in his throat, “I do believe I am thirsty without realizing it.”