reached
and helped had come upon him like a thunderbolt.

Of course he was thankful, now that he put it to himself in such a way.
He ought to be almost happy, he tried to think; but he was at the
world's end from happiness. A hurricane had swept through his soul, and
it would take him a long time to build up again the miserable little
refuge which had been his house of peace. Still, it didn't matter about
himself. He would write to Barbara, and give her the assurance she
asked for. He was glad now of a whim that had led him to learn
typewriting two or three years ago, for he could not trust to
disguising his hand so well that she might not recognize it. It was
many months since he had practiced typing, but he thought that in a few
hours he might again pick up the trick which he could not quite have
lost.

Rather than let himself think any longer, he went out at once, walking
to the town, where he bought a small typewriter of a new make. Its
lettering was in script, which seemed less offensive and coldly
businesslike for a letter than print. Back again at the Mirador he
tried the machine, and sooner than he had expected the old facility
returned. Then he was ready to begin his answer to Barbara; but for a
long time he sat with his fingers on the keys, his eyes fixed upon them
aimlessly. It was not that he could find nothing to say. He could find
too many things, and too many ways of saying those things. But all were
expressions of thoughts which he might not put on paper for Barbara to
read.

Even after he began to type, he took page after page out of the machine
and tore up each one. Vaguely he felt that the right way was to be
laconic; that he ought to show no emotion, lest he should show too
much. Finally he finished a few paragraphs which he knew to be lame and
halting, like himself, stiff and altogether inadequate. Yet he was sure
that he would be able to do no better, and so he determined to send his
letter off as it was.

"You say you are grateful to me," Denin began as abruptly as Barbara
had begun in writing to him, "but it is for me to be grateful to you
really, for speaking as you do of my story, 'The War Wedding.' I am
answering your letter the day it has reached me, because you are
anxious to have a reply to your question. It is what you wished it
might be. I _have_ been very near to death, so near that I seemed to
see across, to the other side of what _we_ think of as a gulf. If I saw
aright, it is no