René grinned at the recollection. He was very pleased and comfortable. To have established a connection with the past through Kurt was to have it made without shock of shame or injury to vanity. Through Kurt's frank mind it was cleaned and shaped for him, presented to him so that he must make the necessary effort to strike out of himself the light which should reveal it, the light of humor. It was a very faint gleam that came out of him, but it was enough to serve and to imprint the picture on his mind, give him possession of it, and deliver him from the anguish which attended all his dark contemplations. "Oh, yes," he said, "and I remember how I lectured you. And now the positions are reversed." "I don't see that." An elegant young man in a gray suit came up, with a beautiful woman of a loveliness and charm that took René's breath away. "How do, Kurt?" said the young man, stepping in front of him. "Lady Clewer wishes to be----" Kurt shook hands with the beautiful lady and with her and her companion walked away toward the knot of brilliant persons gathered round a biplane that had just come to earth. Flushed and tingling at the hurt, René rushed away, savagely wound up his engine, and glided back into the city, to the narrow place where he had till now lived in comfort and the pleasures of simplicity. Small and confined he saw it now, mean and untidy. But it had been and was still his refuge. He had been happy, and the world had ignored his happiness and snatched it away from him. He was actively angry and jealous. He frightened Ann by the hungry affection with which he greeted her when she came home, after working overtime to keep pace with a rush of work at her factory. She liked it too. It was exciting. Yet she could not conceal her fear. She was more than his match in exuberance, but here was a demand upon her that she could not recognize and very soon she was in tears; not her happy tears that had so often reconciled him and made him gleeful and proud. He was humbled and acutely conscious of separation from her, though they clung together. For a few moments the whole weight of their relationship was thrown upon their loyalty, and it did not yield. She slept at last, her hand in his, but he lay awake staring back into the past, fascinated as the light growing in him showed it up in continually sharpening relief--his parting from his father; him he could see very clearly; but his mother was in shadow, sitting, head down, hands busy, never stirring, in acceptance. And Linda? He could see her at that absurd tea-party when his father had shown her his picture. She walked into his life then. They sat by the tulips and she was gone. He could remember his own desire and after, only its horrible, inexplicable disappearance. VI KILNER Could I find a place to be alone with Heaven I would speak my heart out.