It was in France, too, that the dream had come to him of a future of creative purpose.  He had always wanted to write.  Looking back over his University days, he was aware of a formative process which had led towards this end.  It was there he had communed with the spirit of a tragic muse.  There had been all the traditions of Poe and his tempestuous youth—­and Randy, passing the door which had once opened and closed on that dark figure, had felt the thrill of a living personality—­of one who spoke still in lines of ineffable beauty—­“Banners yellow, glorious, golden.  On its roof did float and flow——­” and again “A dirge for her the doubly dead, in that she died so young——­” with the gayety and gloom and grandeur of those chiming, rhyming, tolling bells—­“Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme——­” and that “grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore——­”

“Do you think I could write?” Randy had asked one of his teachers, coming verse-saturated to the question.

The man had looked at him with somber eyes.  “You have an ear for it—­and an eye——­ But genius pays a price.”

“What do you mean?”

“It shows its heart to the world, dissects its sacred thoughts, has no secrets——­”

“But think of leaving a thing behind you like—­’To Helen——­’”

“Do you think the knowledge that he had written a few bits of incomparable verse helped Poe to live?  If he had invented a pill or a headache powder, he would have slept on down and have dined from gold dishes.”

“I’d rather write ‘Ulalume’ than dine from gold dishes.”

“You think that now.  But in twenty years you will sigh for a—­feather bed——­”

“You don’t believe that.”

There had come a lighting of the somber eyes.  “My dear fellow, if you, by the grace of God, have it in you to write, what I believe won’t have anything to do with it.  You will crucify yourself for the sake of a line—­starve for the love of a rhythm.”

Randy had not yet starved for love of a rhythm, but he had lost sleep during those nights in France, trying to put into words the things that gripped his soul.  There had been beauty as well as horror in those days.  What a world it had been, a world of men—­a striving, eager group, raised for the moment above sordidness, above self——­

He had not found verse his medium, although he had drunk eagerly of the golden cups which others had to offer him.  But his prose had gained because of his belief in beauty of structure and of singing lovely words.  As yet he had nothing to show for his pains, but practice had given strength to his pen—­he felt that some day with the right theme he might do—­wonders——­

The trees had again closed in about him.  A shadow flitted by—­a fox, unafraid and in search of a belated meal.  Randy remembered the days when he and Becky had thought that there might be wolves in the forest.  He laughed a little, recalling Becky’s words.  “Sister Loretto has the feeling that the world is a dark forest, and that I am Red Riding Hood.”  Was it that which had brought him back?  Was there, indeed, a Wolf?