“I don’t know and I don’t care,” she replied.  “I wish the immortal infant would let you alone.”  She stooped and kissed his brow, and wrung his hand silently, and went out into the storm.  He heard her close the street door and heard the rusty click of her cotton umbrella as she raised it.  Then he turned to the table at his elbow and kindled his deep-bowled pipe and drew over his legs the skirts of his long gown, coarse, austere, sombre.

He looked comfortable.  A rainy night may depress a woman nursing a sick child that is not her own—­a child already fighting for its feeble, unclaimed, repudiated life, in a world of weeping clouds; but such a night diffuses cheer when the raindrops are heard tapping the roof above beloved bookshelves, tapping the window-panes; when there is low music in the gutter on the back porch; when a student lamp, throwing its shadow over the ceiling and the walls, reserves its exclusive lustre for lustrous pages—­pages over which men for centuries have gladly burnt out the oil of their brief lamps, their iron and bronze, their silver and gold and jewelled lamps—­many-colored eyes of the nights of ages.

It was now middle September of another year and Professor Hardage had entered upon the work of another session.  The interval had left no outward mark on him.  The mind stays young a long time when nourished by a body such as his; and the body stays young a long time when mastered by such a mind.  Day by day faithfully to do one’s work and to be restless for no more; without bitterness to accept obscurity for ambition; to possess all vital passions and to govern them; to stand on the world’s thoroughfare and see the young generations hurrying by, and to put into the hands of a youth here and there a light which will burn long after our own personal taper is extinguished; to look back upon the years already gone as not without usefulness and honor, and forward to what may remain as safe at least from failure or any form of shame, and thus for one’s self to feel the humility of the part before the greatness of the whole of life, and yet the privileges and duties of the individual to the race—­this brings blessedness if it does not always bring happiness, and it had brought both to him.

He sat at peace beside his lamp.  The interval had brought changes to his towns-people.  As he had walked home this afternoon, he had paused and looked across at some windows of the second story of a familiar corner.  The green shutters, tightly closed, were gray with cobweb and with dust.  One sagged from a loosened hinge and flapped in the rising autumn wind, showing inside a window sash also dust-covered and with a newspaper crammed through a broken pane.  Where did Ravenel Morris live now?  Did he live at all?