"It's hard to keep up with your children," he said. "It means keeping up
with everything new. And you stay in your rut and then it's too late.
Before you know it you are old."
But his words subsided in mutterings, and Roger wearily closed his eyes.
For a glance up into Edith's face had shown him only pity there and no heed
to his warning. He saw that she looked upon him as old and still upon
herself as young, though he noticed the threads of gray in her hair....
Then he realized she had gone and that his chamber had grown dark. He must
have been dreaming. Of what, he asked. He tried to remember. And suddenly
out of the darkness, so harsh and clear it startled him, a picture rose in
Roger's mind of a stark lonely figure, a woman in a graveyard cutting the
grass on family graves. Where had he seen it? He could not recall. What had
it to do with Edith? Was she not living in New York?... What had so
startled him just now? Some thought, some vivid picture, some nightmare he
could not recall.
His last talks were with Deborah. All through those days and the long
nights, too, he kept fancying she was in the room, and it brought deep balm
to his restless soul. He asked her to tell him about the schools, and
Deborah talked to him quietly. She was going back to her work in the fall.
She felt very humble about it--she told him she felt older now and she saw
that her work was barely begun. But she was even happier than before.
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