way.

"You're shocked?"

"Yes. And relieved, too, a little. And, at the same time, still a bit
frightened."

"It's probably for the best."

"Yes. It's sad, though. Have you told this to anyone else?"

"No. After all, it's still only a theory. I've got to find some kind of
proof. Except that I don't know how."

"You've convinced me." She stood in the doorway, then turned to him and
he could see that she was crying. She dashed the tears from her eyes. "I
suppose we have to go on doing the same things. We have to have dinner
tonight. I must shop...."

He took her in his arms. "It'll be all right," he said.

"I feel so helpless! What are you going to _do_?"

"Right now," he said, "I think I'll go fishing."

Ann began to laugh, a little hysterically. "You _are_ relaxed about it,"
she said.

"Might as well relax and give it more thought."

Ann kissed him and went into the kitchen. She was gone when he came out
with his rod and creel. Going down the walk under the trees, he was
aware again of what a fine autumn afternoon it was. He began to whistle
as he went down the hill toward the stream.

He didn't catch anything, of course. He had fished the pool at least a
hundred times without luck, but that did not matter. He knew there was a
fighting old bass in its depths and, probably, he would have been sorry
to catch him. Now, his line gently agitated the dark water as he sat
under a big tree on the stream bank and smoked. Idly he opened the copy
of Yeats' poems and began reading: _Turning and turning in the widening
gyre...._

In mounting excitement, he read the coldly beautiful, the terrible and
revelatory poem through to the end. _And what rough beast, its hour come
round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?_

Ward became aware that his pipe was out. He put it away, feeling the
goose pimples, generated by the poem, leave his flesh. Then he shook
himself and sighed. We're lucky, he thought, it might have been the way
the old boy predicted it in the poem. It might have been terrible.

He sighed again, watching his line in the dark water, and thought of
Bobby. You could hardly call Bobby a rough beast. The line flickered in
the water and then was still. He would have a lot of time for this kind
of life, he thought, if his theory were correct. He watched a flight of
leaves dapple the pool with the insignia of autumn. He was not sure he
wanted to spend a lifetime fishing.

Suddenly the pool exploded i