ng touch than to drift into a state of
apathy past any feeling! And Brenton wondered vaguely whether he ever
would feel anything again, anything, that is, as a personal issue,
rather than as a scrap of the great world-plan. Most things, nowadays,
left him conscious of being aloof, remote. Even the going away of his
wife. Even the death of--He pulled himself up short. Not the baby's
death. That was still personal, still very personal; personal was the
message of those little waving hands. What did the baby see? Something
denied for ever to his adult and doubting eyes?

Forgetful of the doctor's invitation to come back to dine, Brenton at
twilight found himself upon the long white bridge, his elbows on the
rail, his eyes upon the darkening surface of the river, as it swept
down upon him from out the purpling hills. As of old, its mystery held
him, the mystery of its ceaseless coming, the mystery of its ceaseless
going on and on, until it lost all individual existence in the
soundless, boundless sea. To-night, in the apathy which held his senses
in subjection, he watched it through the dying twilight, until it
ceased to be to him a river, but appeared to him as an embodiment of
life itself, coming, coming, coming down to him out of the purpling
distance, going, going, going down away from him into the deepening
shadows. And then the light died, and darkness crept across it all, and
then--extinction.

Next morning, he arranged it with Professor Opdyke that, for the
present, the other assistant should take over all of his lectures,
while he himself would put in his time inside the laboratory.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Dolph, being Dolph, spoke out his fears to Opdyke. Dolph, being a
rhetorician, approached his subject cornerwise, however.

"I wish to heaven you'd fall in love with Olive, Opdyke," he said
moodily, next day.

Reed, looking up from the chaos of letters that were littering his
couch, gave a short laugh.

"So that I could properly present my sympathy to you?" he queried, as a
faint colour stole up across his cheeks.

Dolph dropped his rhetoric, and went bluntly to the point.

"No; so that you could obliterate Brenton's image from her mind."

"What do you mean, Dennison?" Reed spoke sternly.

Dolph threw himself back in his chair and answered at the ceiling.

"I am not sure I mean anything at all. Olive has sense enough for a
dozen, and Brenton is a married man, with a vampire for a wife."

Reed