This has to be told. In that moment, that battered old contraption of cast iron and rattling keys was more to Jimmie Wardwell than woman, man or child could be. It was dearer to him, it was nearer to where he thought and really lived. And he loved it and hugged it to him, as though already they were trying to take part of his soul from him. For men of Wardwell's kind are like that. When the passion of creating has once gotten fire in their souls, they are damned to live this life alone. No articulate being can come near. And in their loneliness they fasten on something connected with their passion. There have been men who have loved to the death a rickety old table at which they have worked, or even a corner of a garret room.
After a while Jimmie lurched up out of his chair and fumblingly got ready to crawl into bed. It was the first time that he had missed going down to say good night, but he dared not face Augusta tonight.
The idea of dying, physically, meant little or nothing to him. He had never thought of it. He did not think of it now. But the failures of the past months and this last sure sign of physical failure, of the end in fact, threw him into blind panic; not a panic in fear of pain, or darkness, still less of punishment. No, it was the fear that the spirit fire, burning pent up and mad within him, was to be smothered. He was afraid, afraid that he, Jimmie Wardwell, would be snuffed out before he could form and bring out the things that burned within him and craved for expression.
Shivering under the bed clothes, he moaned over and over like a hurt child: "Never another good line!" Until, again like a child in pain, he fell into a sort of sleep.
He did not hear, probably he had forgotten, the girl who came with trembling steps and beating heart to listen at his door for this breathing and then hurried back in anxious fear to her own endless vigil.
A Wardwell debonair and blithe as the early spring morning came into Augusta's sitting room after breakfast. He had swept from him all traces of the storm of the night, and Augusta knew from the first glance that she would learn nothing from him in this mood.
"The glory of the morning,
"The beauty of the dawning,
"The joy of the skies,