Robert William Chambers

Between Friends Robert William Chambers

Like a man who reenters a closed and darkened house and lies down; lying there, remains conscious of sunlight outside, of bird-calls, and the breeze in the trees, so had Drene entered into the obscurity of himself. Through the chambers of his brain the twilit corridors where cringed his bruised and disfigured soul, there nothing stirring except the automatic pulses which never cease. Sometimes, when the sky itself crashes earthward and the world lies in ruins from horizon to horizon, life goes on. The things that men live through-and live!But no doubt Death was too busy elsewhere to attend to Drene. He had become very lean by the time it was all over. Gray glinted on his temples; gray softened his sandy mustache: youth was finished as far as he was concerned. An odd idea persisted in his mind that it had been winter for many years. And the world thawed out very slowly for him.