After she went with David to dine at the home of the president of the company, her husband told her: "The president says he ought to have you on salary. He says now he knows why I'm doing well."
Alice quivered with joy; but she was not undeceived to believe that business, however she shared it with him, was enough to make him happy.
What he wanted, she had never known; and it was not describable. It was, indeed, an unreality which he might never have learned, if Fidelia had not come.
It was no mere lightness or gayness or joyfulness; it was nothing less than escape from realities to the remotenesses and fastness of the crystal valley of the Titans, to the Throne of Saturn, through the Seventh Gate, and to the brink of Creation on the dawn of Day.
David said to himself, "There's a lot of pagan in me. Mother knew it when she came to see I should never have gone into the ministry. I want to get away from the world but not in father's way; he wants to lament and pray. I want to play."
The year had turned to February again, the month of opposite anniversaries; the month when Fidelia had appeared at college and when Alice had married David and when the news of Bolton's death had come. David, thinking of this and recollecting Fidelia's superstitions, held it in his mind as a month when something was likely to happen; and it was upon a morning in the second week of February that a boy brought to his desk the card of Edward Jessop.
David knew at once that he brought word of
