"And I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve only to shut my eyes to see it all, hear it all—the naked spars rocking against the grey-blue of the sky, the wrench and creak of the ship, the threshing of rope ends, the wilderness of pale-green water, the sound of rain and scud.... No, no, I’ll not forget it. And death was a horrid specter in that glimpse I got of him. I—I don’t care to see him again. Well, good-by once more." "Good-by, Manning, and believe me, this is all hypochondria. Go and catch fish. Go shoot something, and in twenty-four hours you’ll believe there’s no such thing as death." The door closed. Verrill was gone. *PART TWO* The banquet hall was in the top story of one of the loftiest sky-scrapers of the city. Along the eastern wall was a row of windows reaching from ceiling to floor, and as the extreme height of the building made it unnecessary to draw the curtains whoever was at the table could look out and over the entire city in that direction. Thus it was that Manning Verrill, on a certain night some four weeks after his interview with the doctor, sat there at his walnuts and black coffee and, absorbed, abstracted, looked out over the panorama beneath him, where the Life of a great nation centered and throbbed. To the unenlightened the hall would have presented a strange spectacle. Down its center extended the long table. The chairs were drawn up, the covers laid. But the chairs were empty, the covers untouched; and but for the presence of the one man the hall was empty, deserted. At the head of the table Verrill, in evening dress, a gardenia in his lapel, his napkin across his lap, an unlighted cigar in his fingers, sat motionless, looking out over the city with unseeing eyes. Of thirty places around the table, none was distinctive, none varied. But at Verrill’s right hand the thirty-first place, the place of honour, differed from all the rest. The chair was large, massive. The oak of which it was made was black, while instead of the usual array of silver and porcelain, one saw but two vessels,—an unopened bottle of wine and a large silver cup heavily chased. From far below in the city’s streets eleven o’clock struck. The sounds broke in upon Verrill’s reverie and he stirred, glanced about the room and then, rising, went to the window and stood there for some time looking out. At his feet, far beneath lay the city, twinkling with lights. In the business quarter all was dark, but from the district of theatres and restaurants there arose a glare into the night, ruddy, vibrating, with here and there a ganglion of electric bulbs upon a "fire sign" emphasising itself in a whiter radiance. Cable-cars and cabs threaded the streets with little starring eyes of coloured lights, while underneath all this blur of illumination, the people, debouching from the theatres, filled the sidewalks with tiny ant-like swarms, minute, bustling.