He had been looking at such scenes for two months. Nearly five had elapsed since he had descended² from the train at Northridge and strained his eyes for the sleigh that was to take him to Weymore: Weymore, which he was never to behold³!... Part of the interval⁴—the first part—was still a great grey blur⁵. Even now he could not be quite sure how he had got back to Boston, reached the house of a cousin, and been thence transferred to a quiet room looking out on snow under bare trees. He looked out a long time at the same scene, and finally one day a man he had known at Harvard came to see him and invited him to go out on a business trip to the Malay Peninsula.

 

“You’ve had a bad shake-up, and it’ll do you no end of good to get away from things.”

 

When the doctor came the next day it turned out that he knew of the plan and approved it. “You ought to be quiet for a year. Just loaf and look at the landscape,” he advised.

 

Faxon felt the first faint stirrings of curiosity.

 

“What’s been the matter with me, anyway?”

 

“Well, over-work, I suppose. You must have been bottling up for a bad breakdown⁶ before you started for New Hampshire last December. And the shock of that poor boy’s death did the rest.”

 

Ah, yes—Rainer had died. He remembered....

 

He started for the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was patient and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar things. He seldom looked at a newspaper and he never opened a letter without a

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