Room after
room he left in the dark. Then he went slowly up the stairs, his hand
gratefully feeling those guiding points grown so familiar to his touch
through many thousand evenings. His hand lingered on the banister and he
stopped again to listen there.
He did not come downstairs again.
He was able to sleep but little at night. Turning restlessly on his bed, he
would glance out of the window up at the beetling wall close by, tier on
tier of apartments from which faint voices dropped out of the dark.
Gradually as the night wore on, these voices would all die away into long
mysterious silences--for to him at least such silences had grown to be
very mysterious. Alone in the hours that followed, even these modern
neighbors and this strange new eager town pressing down upon his house
seemed no longer strange to him nor so appallingly immense, seemed even
familiar and small to him, as the eyes of his mind looked out ahead.
From his bed he could see on the opposite wall the picture Judith had given
him, always so fresh and cool and dim with its deep restful tones of blue,
of the herdsmen and the cattle on the dark mountain rim at dawn. And
vaguely he wondered whether it was because he saw more clearly, or whether
his mind in this curious haze could no longer see so well, that as he
looked before him he felt no fear nor any more uncertainty. All his doubts
had lifted, he was so sure of Judith now.
Pages:
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365