y of his
father and mother. But he found it destroyed utterly ... its prim beds
swept aside to make way for a huge apartment house. The last
intangible link which had bound him to his old life had been
destroyed.

He turned away, almost with a feeling of relief--the past was forever
dead, burying itself in its own tragic oblivion. He climbed higher, to
the topmost point of the Hyde Street Hill, up the steps leading to the
reservoir. It was another night of provocative perfumes and promissory
warmths. He skirted the sun-baked slopes, sown with blossoming
alfalfa, and came upon a clump of wind-tortured acacia bushes facing
the west. He threw himself down and lay in a sweet physical truce,
gazing up at the twinkling sky. He was alone with the night, he had
not even a disciple to betray him.

He knew that if he willed it so he could be up and off, forever
eluding, forever flaunting the law's ubiquitous presence. The sharp
urge for subtle revenge which had come with realization of his power
had passed, but he was done with any and all compromises, he had no
heart for the decaying fruits of deception.

Would they find him here wrapped in the cool fragrance of the night,
or must he go down to them, yielding himself up silently and without
bitterness? He had touched life at every point. He could say, now,
with Hilmer:

"I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact!"

Yes, even to murder.

And with Storch he could repeat:

"A man who's been through hell is like a field broken to the plow.
He's ready for seed."

He _was_ ready for seed, so freshly and deeply broken that he had a
passion to lie fallow against a worthy sowing.

Presently, enveloped in the perfect and childlike faith which follows
revelation, he slept, with his face turned toward the stars. And as he
stirred ever so slightly he felt the nearness of two souls. Clearly
and more clearly they defined themselves until he knew them for those
two erring companions of his misery who had been made suddenly perfect
in the crucible of sorrow and sacrifice. They came toward him in a
white, silent beauty, until on one side stood Felix Monet and on the
other Sylvia Molineaux.

And before him in review passed a motley company of every tragic group
that he had ever known--business associates, jailbirds, the inmates of
Fairview, Storch's terrible companions. He recognized each group in
its turn by their outer trappings. But suddenly their clothes melte