That meant work--the hard, incessant, blinding, stupefying work which
stuns thought and makes such a life endurable.
Not that he had ever desired death as a refuge or as a solution of
despair; there was too much of the soldier in him. Besides, it is so
impossible for youth to believe in death, to learn to apply the word to
themselves. He had not learned to, and he had seen death, and watched
it; but for himself he had not learned to believe in it. When one turns
forty it is easier to credit it.
Thinking of death, impersonally, he sat watching the flames playing
above the heavy log; and as he lay there in his chair, the unlighted
pipe drooping in his hands, the telephone on the desk rang, and he rose
and unhooked the receiver.
Drina's voice sounded afar, and: "Hello, sweetheart!" he said gaily; "is
there anything I can do for your youthful highness?"
"I've been talking over the 'phone to Boots," she said. "You know,
whenever I have nothing to do I call up Boots at his office and talk to
him.
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