XNothing was real to him except the scent of lilacs. He had slept a little toward morning. Wakening, his thoughts were as nebulous as the April dawn. He was suspended in a gray void, and it seemed that he and Benjamin were dead together, and some other with them, whom he could not place for the moment. He had not meant to sleep. And had he slept, and was he now awake? When a man closed his eyes at night he did not know whether he would open them in the morning. And was he then dead or living? He did not, himself, know. Only another, observing his breathing, could say, “The man is not dead, but sleeping.”
A breath of April wind stirred the curtains and the fragrance of the lilacs came stronger and with it that sense of danger. He started up from the couch and staggered a little. Nellie’s l
