re out, innumerable,
thick-sown, studding with gold the narrow roof of sky which, rising from
the mountains on either side, arched itself over the valley. He stood
staring before him, frowning, forgetting what he had come out to do. He
told himself that coming from that yelling confusion inside, and the
glare of those garish lamps, he was stupefied by the great silence of
the night. There was nothing clear in his mind, only a turmoil of
eddying sensations which he could not name. He walked down to the huge
dark pine, the pine which 'Gene Powers loved like a person, and which
his wife wished were cut down. What a ghastly prison marriage was, he
thought, a thing as hostile to the free human spirit as an iron
ball-and-chain.

He looked back at the little house, tiny as an insect before the great
bulk of the mountains, dwarfed by the gigantic tree, ridiculous,
despicable in the face of Nature, like the human life it sheltered. From
its every window poured a flood of yellow light that was drunk up in a
twinkling by the vastness of the night's obscurity.

He leaned against the straight, sternly unyielding bole of the tree,
folding his arms and staring at the house. What a beastly joke the whole
business of living!

A thousand ugly recollections poured their venom upon him from his past
life. Life, this little moment of blind, sensual groping and grabbing
for something worth while that did not exist, save in the stultification
of the intelligence. All that you reached for, so frantically, it was
only another handful of mud, when you held it.

Past the yellow squares of the windows, he saw the shapes of the
dancers, insect-tiny, footing it to and fro. And in one of those
silhouettes he recognized Marise Crittenden.

He turned away from the sight and struck his fist against the rough bark
of the tree. What an insane waste and confusion ruled everywhere in
human life! A woman like that to be squandered . . . an intelligence fine
and supple, a talent penetrating and rare like hers for music, a strange
personal beauty like that of no other woman, a depth one felt like
mid-ocean, a capacity for fun like a child's and a vitality of
personality, a power for passion that pulsed from her so that to touch
her hand casually set one thrilling . . . ! And good God! What was destiny
doing with her? Spending that gold like water on three brats incapable
of distinguishing between her and any good-natured woman who would put
on their shoe