He could no
more conceive it than he could imagine noon and midnight in conjunction,
and feeling as guilty as if he had played the part of an eavesdropper he
turned away, snapped off the lights, and slipped into bed.
The pleasant warmth of sleep would not come. In its place the images of
the day filed past him like the dance of figures on a motion picture
screen, and always, like the repeated entrance of the hero, the other
images grew small and dim. He saw again the burly stranger wading
through the crowd in the arena, shaking off the packed mob as the prow
of a stately ship shakes off the water, to either side.
At length he started out of bed and glanced through the window. The
moving shadow still swept across the lighted shades of his father's
room; so he donned bathrobe and slippers and went down the long hall. At
the door he did not stop to knock, for he was too deeply concerned by
this time to pay any heed to convention. He grasped the knob and threw
the door wide open. What happened then was so sudden that he could not
be sure afterward what he had seen.
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