nge on it and pillows
puffed up with billowy invitation, as if they were on the point of
floating away. Had they risen before his eyes, Keith would have
regarded the phenomenon rather casually. After the swift piling up of
the amazing events of those fifteen hours, a floating pillow would have
seemed quite in the natural orbit of things. But they did not float.
They remained where they were, their white breasts bared to him, urging
upon him a common-sense perspective of the situation. He wasn't going
to run away. He couldn't sit up all night. Therefore why not come to
them and sleep?

There was something directly personal in the appeal of the pillows and
the bed. It was not general; it was for him. And Keith responded.

He made another note of the time, a half-hour after one, when he turned
in. He allotted himself four hours of sleep, for it was his intention
to be up with the sun.

XII

Necessity had made of Keith a fairly accurate human chronometer. In the
second year of his fugitivism he had lost his watch. At first it was
like losing an arm, a part of his brain, a living friend. From that
time until he came into possession of Conniston's timepiece he was his
own hour-glass and his own alarm clock. He became proficient.

Brady's bed and the Circe-breasted pillows that supported his head were
his undoing. The morning after Shan Tung's visit he awoke to find the
sun flooding in through the eastern window of his room, The warmth of
it as it fell full in his face, setting his eyes blinking, told him it
was too late. He guessed it was eight o'clock. When he fumbled his
watch out from under his pillow and looked at it, he found it was a
quarter past. He got up quietly, his mind swiftly aligning itself to
the happenings of yesterday. He stretched himself until his muscles
snapped, and his chest expanded with deep breaths of air from the
windows he had left open when he went to bed. He was fit. He was ready
for Shan Tung, for McDowell. And over this physical readiness there
surged the thrill of a glorious anticipation. It fairly staggered him
to discover how badly he wanted to see Mary Josephine again.

He wondered if she was still asleep and answered that there was little
possibility of her being awake--even at eight o'clock. Probably she
would sleep until noon, the poor, tired, little thing! He smiled
affectionately into the mirror over Brady's dressing-table. And then
the unmistakable sound of voices in the