“Oh, very!” agreed Adrian.  “Yes, game!  Very, indeed!”

He walked slowly down the sunlit courtway on which the back door of the club opened, swinging his stick and meditating.  Spring was approaching its zenith.  In the warm May afternoon pigeons tumbled about near-by church spires which cut brown inlays into the soft blue sky.  There was a feeling of open windows; a sense of unseen tulips and hyacinths; of people playing pianos....  Too bad, an old man dying that way, his hand furtively seeking his heart, when all this spring was about!  Terror in possession of him, too!  People like that hated to die; they couldn’t see anything ahead.  Well, Adrian reflected, the real tragedy of it hadn’t been his fault.  He had always been ready at the slightest signal to forget almost everything—­yes, almost everything.  Even that time when, as a sweating newspaper reporter, he had, one dusk, watched in the park his uncle and Mrs. Denby drive past in the cool seclusion of a shining victoria.  Curious!  In itself the incident was small, but it had stuck in his memory more than others far more serious, as concrete instances are likely to do....  No, he wasn’t sorry; not a bit!  He was glad, despite the hesitation he experienced in saying to himself the final word.  He had done his best, and this would mean his own release and Cecil’s.  It would mean at last the blessed feeling that he could actually afford a holiday, and a little unthinking laughter, and, at thirty-nine, the dreams for which, at twenty-five, he had never had full time.  He walked on down the courtway more briskly.

That Saturday night was the night he dined with his uncle.  It had turned very warm; unusually warm for the time of year.  When he had dressed and had sought out Cecil to say good-by to her he found her by the big studio window on the top floor of the apartment where they lived.  She was sitting in the window-seat, her chin cupped in her hand, looking out over the city, in the dark pool of which lights were beginning to open like yellow water-lilies.  Her white arm gleamed in the gathering dusk, and she was dressed in some diaphanous blue stuff that enhanced the bronze of her hair.  Adrian took his place silently beside her and leaned out.  The air was very soft and hot and embracing, and up here it was very quiet, as if one floated above the lower clouds of perpetual sound.

Cecil spoke at last.  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” she said.  “I should have come to find you, but I couldn’t.  These first warm nights!  You really understand why people live, after all, don’t you?  It’s like a pulse coming back to a hand you love.”  She was silent a moment.  “Kiss me,” she said, finally.  “I—­I’m so glad I love you, and we’re young.”

He stooped down and put his arms about her.  He could feel her tremble.  How fragrant she was, and queer, and mysterious, even if he had lived with her now for almost fifteen years!  He was infinitely glad at the moment for his entire life.  He kissed her again, kissed her eyes, and she went down the stairs with him to the hall-door.  She was to stop for him at his uncle’s, after a dinner to which she was going.