Old Sagner was deliciously stupid over many things, but he dissected the darkness toward Professor Lennart's house as though it had been his favorite kind of cadaver. Here, was the hardening turf, compact as flesh. There, was the tough, tight tendon of the ripping ground pine. Farther along under an exploring match a great vapid peony loomed like a dead heart. Somewhere out in an orchard the May-blooms smelled altogether too white. Almost at the edge of the Lennarts' piazza he turned and stepped back to my pace and began talking messily about some stale biological specimen that had just arrived from the Azores. College people, it seemed, did not ring bells for one another, and the most casual flop of Sagner's knuckles against the door brought Mrs. Lennart almost immediately to welcome us. "Almost immediately," I say, because the slight, faltering delay in her footfall made me wonder even then whether it was limb or life that had gone just a little bit lame. But the instant the hall light struck her face my hand clutched down involuntarily on Sagner's shoulder. It was the same, same face whose brighter, keener, shinier pastelled likeness had been the only joyous object in Sagner's homesick German room. With almost embarrassing slowness now we followed her lagging steps back to the library. It was the first American home that I had seen for some years, and the warmth of it, and the color, and the glow, and the luxurious, deep-seated comfort, mothered me like the notes of an old, old song. Between the hill-green walls the long room stretched like a peaceful valley to the very edge of the huge, gray field-stone fireplace that blocked the final vista like a furious breastwork raised against all the invading tribes of history. Red books and gold frames and a chocolate-colored bronze or two caught up the flickering glint from the apple-wood fire, and out of some shadowy corner flanked by a grand piano a young girl's contralto voice, sensuous as liquid plush, was lipping its magic way up and down the whole wonderful, molten scale.