Roger went into the kitchen and Anne heard him light the candle-lantern they had always kept for searching things stowed in the tiny loft they called the attic. Then he brought the step ladder and, taking out the small square of ceiling that made the attic entrance, clambered up. Anne's hands were stiff with cold. It seemed impossible that Roger should be doing these things exactly as he had done them ages upon ages ago in the past. Life was so different now that no motion in it could be quite the same. But it was exactly the same, even to Roger's throwing the unwanted things out of his way as he always did, because he was a bad packer and never knew exactly where he had put anything. At last he found it, and threw the mattress out through the opening, scrambling down with the framework. When he had put away the ladder and lantern and dusted his clothes, he brought the crib in.
"Shall I put it up in the bedroom?"
Anne was bent now above the opened trunk searching Rogie's night things which she had thrust hastily in among her own clothes in the rush of packing.
"Yes," she whispered, without looking up, feigning this need not to wake Rogie, already restless from the unusual confusion about him.
When she had found the things she carried Rogie to the fire, undressed him, slipped on the tiny pajamas, and, holding him close, listened with every nerve to Roger moving about in the next room. In a few moments now Rogie would be in his own crib, in the old room. What would Roger do?
At last Roger came from the bedroom.
"I've put it up but I didn't make it—I don't know just how you do it. The blankets and things are all on the bed—I'm sure they're all there."
Anne rose and moved to lay Rogie on the couch while she made up the crib, but Roger held out his arms and Anne laid the baby in them. Very gently Roger sat down in Anne's place and she went in to make the crib. But the blood beat so behind her eyes and her hands trembled so violently that she scarcely knew what she did.
Roger stared across his son's head into the flames, conscious of the new disorder of the room, the opened trunk, Rogie's tiny garments lying on the hearthrug, Anne in the next room.
The past, the present, the future tangled before him, a mass of paths leading in all directions; quagmires of misunderstanding, blind alleys of separate interests, smooth, pleasant spots of memories long past. Here a path to the night by the lake when Anne's lips had clung as eagerly as his own; there the blank wall of the lacquer screen and the desert spots of Anne's carping criticism. Here the path of his deepest faith and belief broke short above the chasm of Anne's indifference. The world was indifferent too. But the world's indifference he could escape in the comradeship of others who believed with him; in solitary hours when, physically rested, his own faith always rose again clear and strong. With the narrowness and indifference of strangers he did not have to rise up and lie down, eat, sleep and be patient.