He bent and kissed her.

A week later the old house was draped and covered with ghostly linen and every homelike touch eliminated according to the sacred rites of the old regime; and man, that most domestic of all animals, was left to the contemplation of a smothered ideal—­the ideal of home.

Mrs. Tweksbury, with two servants, started by motor for Maine.

“I may not be progressive in some ways,” she proudly declared, “but a motor car keeps one from much that is best avoided—­crowds, noise, and confusion.  And I always insist that I am progressive where progress is worth while.”

But, alone in the still house, Raymond felt as if a linen cover also enshrouded him—­he lost his appetite and took to lying at night with his hands clasped under his head—­thinking!  Thinking, he called it—­but he was only drifting.  He was abdicating thought.  He got so that he could see himself as if detached from himself——­

“And a dub of a chap, too, I look to myself,” he reflected, ambiguously.  “I wonder just what stuff is in me, anyway?  I’ve been trained to the limit, and I have a decent idea about most things, but I wonder if I could pull it off, if I were up against it like some other fellows who have rowed their own boats?  Having had Dad and Aunt Emily in my blood, has given me a twist, and the money has tied the knot.  I don’t know really what’s in me—­in the rough—­and there is a rough in every fellow—­maybe it’s sand and maybe it’s plain dirt.”

This was all as wild and vague as anything Patricia or Joan could evolve.  It came of the season and the everlasting youth of life.

“I’m going to talk over the rot with that little white thing down at the Brier Bush,” Raymond declared one night to that self of his that stood off on inspection; “what’s the harm?  She’s got the occult bug, and I’m keen about it just now.  No one will be the worse for me having the talk—­she’s all right and that veil of hers leaves us a lot freer to speak out than face to face would.”  And then Raymond switched on the lights and read certain books that held him rigid until he heard the milkman in the street below.

In those nights Raymond learned to know that sounds have shades, as objects have.  Below, following, encompassing there were vague, haunting echoes.  Even the rattling of milk cans had them; the steps of the watchman; the wind of early morning that stirs the darkness!

And then in the end Raymond did quite another thing from what he had planned.  He left the office one day at four-thirty and walked uptown.  He paced the block on which the Brier Bush was situated until he began to feel conscious—­then he walked around the block, always hurrying until he came in sight of the tea room.  He felt that all the summer inhabitants of the city were drinking tea there that afternoon, and he began to curse them for their folly.

It was five-forty-five when Joan came down the steps.