* * * * * Little by little, some unsuspected and implacable vitality hidden in his body slowly pushed him, groaning and unwilling, out of the living death which he still so passionately desired to make dead death. The weeks passed, he suffered less. He lay passive and empty, staring up at the ceiling, counting and cataloguing all the small blemishes and stains in the plaster. A little strength seeped slowly back into his body. One day he found that he could read for a few moments at a time. He became aware of the life that went on about him. Chiefly it was Stephen’s life, because Stephen was generally in the foreground of the room. Lester began to look down at the child as he played about the floor, watched languidly the expression on his round, pugnacious face, almost always dirty now, but, so it seemed to his father, not always so darkly grim as he remembered it. But then, he thought again (one of the slow thoughts which occasionally pushed their way up to his attention), he had never seen Stephen except in active conflict with authority. “I never saw one of my children just living before,” he meditated. As he lay in bed, a book was usually open before him, but he looked over it at the far more interesting spectacle of his undiscovered little boy. * * * * * His first voluntary move back towards life was on the day when he had his talk with Stephen about his Teddy. It began by his remembering suddenly what it had been which had begun, and with which he had wanted to go on. The little memory, presenting itself so abruptly out of his subconsciousness, startled him into saying impulsively, “Oh, Stephen, come here a minute. What was it you started to tell me that day--up in the bathroom, when I was shaving--about your Teddy?” The moment he had spoken he realized how foolish the question was. The day seemed like yesterday to him because there had been only blackness for him ever since. But it was two months ago; and two months for a little boy--how could he have thought that Stephen would remember? But, as a matter of fact, Stephen looked as though he remembered very well indeed. He had started at the word “Teddy,” had turned instantly suspicious eyes on his father and had made a clutch at the stuffed bear over whose head he now stared at the man in bed, silently, his mouth a hard line, with the dogged expression of resistance which was so familiar. Lester’s enforced observation of Stephen made this pantomime intelligible to him, in part. Stephen was afraid something would happen to Teddy. Why in the world should he be afraid? On this question he put his attention, watching Stephen closely as he said laughingly, “What’s the matter with you, old man? Do you think I want to take Teddy away to play with him myself?”