* *

As Nicky walked up the hill and across the Heath, he wondered why it had
happened, and why, now that it had happened, he cared so little. He
could have understood it if he hadn't cared at all for Desmond. But he
had cared in a sort of way. If she had cared at all for him he thought
they might have made something of it, something enduring, perhaps, if
they had had children of their own.

He still couldn't think why it had happened. But he knew that, even if
he had loved Desmond with passion, it wouldn't have been the end of him.
The part of him that didn't care, that hadn't cared much when he lost
his Moving Fortress, was the part that Desmond never would have
cared for.

He didn't know whether it was outside him and beyond him, bigger and
stronger than he was, or whether it was deep inside, the most real part
of him. Whatever happened or didn't happen it would go on.

How could he have ended _here_, with poor little Desmond? There was
something ahead of him, something that he felt to be tremendous and
holy. He had always known it waited for him. He was going out to meet
it; and because of it he didn't care.

And after a year of Desmond he was glad to go back to his father's
house; even though he knew that the thing that waited for him was
not there.

Frances and Anthony were happy again. After all, Heaven had manipulated
their happiness with exquisite art and wisdom, letting Michael and
Nicholas go from them for a little while that they might have them again
more completely, and teaching them the art and wisdom that would
keep them.

Some day the children would marry; even Nicky might marry again. They
would prepare now, by small daily self-denials, for the big renunciation
that must come.

Yet in secret they thought that Michael would never marry; that Nicky,
made prudent by disaster, wasn't really likely to marry again. John
would marry; and they would be happy in John's happiness and in
John's children.

And Nicky had not been home before he offered to his parents the
spectacle of an outrageous gaiety. You would have said that life to
Nicholas was an amusing game where you might win or lose, but either way
it didn't matter. It was a rag, a sell. Even the preceedings, the
involved and ridiculous proceedings of his divorce, amused him.

It was undeniably funny that he should be supposed to have deserted
Desmond.

Frances wondered, again, whether Nicky really had any feelings, and
whethe