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Show -396- hesitated a moment before turning the engine on. He didn't xant to go home e i t h e r . He t r i e d to think of someplace else to go, but he couldn't. He didn't xant to see anyone. He f i n a l l y started the motor, backed out of his parking place, l e f t the l i t t l e parking lot of the clinic and headed for his h i l l and his home. Spring came early in Marin County; usually by February, when the h i l l s had regained t h e i r green, xrhen the daffodils had sprung up in the Professor's garden, and when the wild-flowers on the h i l l s i d e began to appear. Now i t was not yet the middle of January, but the a i r was springlike when the Professor left his house to drive into the c i t y . The dky was clear, and more than the usual number of stars blinked overhead. Not as many as in Utah, where the a i r xas thinner. The Professor always thought this when he looked a t the California sky. He thought i t almost automatically tonight, but there was something within him that made him want to think of the s t a r s , not of the meeting he was leaving to attend. He had f e l t better the l a s t twenty-four hours. Yesterday the pool man had come and cleaned the leaves from the bottom the of the pool, thai Professor had gone out and raked and sxrept the deck. The martinis he had drunk the last txro nights had not tasted the xay they usually did, but they had helped him sleep, and he had f e l t better each morning. His interest in the s t a r s , he supposed, xas part of his gradual recovery- He xas able to sustain this mood as he drove doxm the |