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Show '5' Gllll 1Rosc anll $tl,er step and Minerva watching them with maternal p~~ . "She said we'd lived on mush and m1lk long enough," said Romeo, pensively. "We might fry the mush," Juliet suggested. "And have butter and maple syrup on it?" "Maybe." "And drink the milk, and have bread, too?" " I guess so." "And jam?" "Not while we're in mourning," said Juliet, firmly. "We can have syrup on our bread." "That's just as good." "If you think so, you ought not to have it." uwe 've got to feed ourselves, or we 'II die," he objected vigorously, "and if we're dead, we won't be any good to him or to anybody else, and we can't ever repent any more." "I 'm not so sure about that," said Juliet, with sinister emphasis. "Nothing will happen to us that we don't deserve," Romeo assured hfr, "so come on and let's have jam. If it makes us sick, it's wrong, and if it doesn't, it 's all right." The following day, they voluntarily returned to their mush and milk, for they had eaten too much jam, and, having been very ill in the night, considered it sufficient evidence that their penance was not yet over. 2 53 XVIII "']Less tban tbe IDust" THE heat of August shimmered over the '1\oCibnnoc land, and still, to every inquiry at the door or telephone, the quiet young woman in blue and white said: "No change." Allison was listless and apathetic, yet comparatively free from pain. Life, for him, had ebbed back to the point where the tide must either cease or turn. He knew neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness; only the great pause of soul and body, the sense of the ultimate goal. One by one, he meditated upon the things he used to care for. Isabel came first, but her youth and beauty had ceased to trouble or to beckon. His father had gone on ahead. The delusion still persisted, but he spoke of it no more. Even the violin did not matter now. He remembered the endless hours he had spent at work almost every day of his life for years, and to ~hat end? In an instant, it had been rendered empty, purposeless, and vain-like life itself. |