“Good, decent, quiet little men.”
“We shall do good things.”
His hand closed more tightly on Mendel’s, who surrendered himself to the force of the ebb in his friend, felt the cold, salt waves of death close about him and drag him out, out until Logan was lost, and with a frightful wrench all that was dead in himself was torn away, and he was left prostrate upon the fringes of his life. . . . He became conscious to find himself leaning over Logan, gazing at his lips, with his own lips near them, waiting for the breath that would come no more.
It was finished. Logan had made an end.
Turning away, Mendel saw through the window the lovely grey-blue sky, fleecy with mauve-grey clouds heaped up by the driving wind—beautiful, beautiful. . . .
[X
PASSOVER]
IT was many days before Mendel could take up his work again. His mind simply could not express itself in paint.
His first clear thought as he emerged from the numbness of the crisis was for Morrison, and to her he wrote, telling her what had happened, describing in minute detail his experience in the hospital, and adding that he was without the least wish to see her, and would write to her if his life ever became again what it had been before Logan’s violent end.
It seemed to him that Logan had claimed him, that he was destined to go through life with Logan, a dead man, for sole companion, and always behind Logan was the ominous and dreadful shadow of Oliver, from whom he had thought to escape those many months ago.