Stephen’s father found himself standing by the bed, snatching the curtain to one side, crushing out the flames between his hands. His wheel chair still stood by the open door. The draught between the two open windows now blew out the candle abruptly. In the darkness the door slammed shut with a loud report. * * * * * But the room was not dark to Lester. As actually as he had seen and felt the burst of flame from the curtain, he now felt himself flare up in physical ecstasy to be standing on his own feet, to know that he had taken a dozen steps, to know that he was no longer a half-man, a mutilated wreck from whom normal people averted their eyes in what they called pity but what was really contempt and disgust. He was like a man who has been shut in a cage too low for him to stand, who has crouched and stooped and bowed his shoulders, and who suddenly is set free to rise to his full stature, to throw his arms up over his head. The relief from oppression was as rending as a pain. It was a thousand times more joyful than any joy he had ever known. His self, his ego, savagely, grimly, harshly beaten down as it had been, sprang up with an exultant yell. The flame of its exultation flared up like gun-cotton, as the curtain had flared. And died down as quickly, crushed and ground to blackness between giant hands that snatched it to one side as it dropped down towards Stephen’s unconscious upturned face ... flames on that tender flesh.... Lester knew nothing but that there was blackness within and without him. He was lying fully dressed across the foot of his bed. His face was buried in the bedclothes, but it was no blacker there than in the room ... in his heart. What made it so black? He did not know. He was beyond thought. He was nothing but wild, quivering apprehension, as he had been in the instant when, poised on the icy roof, he had turned to hurl himself down into the void. The terror of that instant was with him again. What fall was before him now? He went a little insane as he lay there on the bed. He seemed to himself to be falling, as he had fallen so many times during his convalescence, endlessly, endlessly, in a dread that grew worse because now he knew what unutterable anguish awaited him. He shuddered, grasped the blanket and tore at it savagely, wondering madly what it was ... what it was ... what it was.... He came to himself with a great start that shook him, that shook the bed so that it rattled in the dark silent room. He sat up and wiped his face that was dripping wet. Now what? His mind was lucid. He was not falling, he was on his bed, in his room, with Stephen sleeping beside him in the darkness. And he knew now that he could get well. Well, what was he to do, now that he knew he could get well? * * * * * He knew beforehand that there was nothing he could do. Life had once more cast him out from the organization of things.