THE TWILIGHT BORDER between sleep and waking was a Romahis m; splashing fountains and arched, narrow streets, the golden lavish city of blossoms and age-soft stone. Sometimes in this semi-sciousness he sojourned again in Paris, or war German rubble, or Swiss skiing and a snow hotel. Sometimes, also, in a fallow Geia field at hunting dawn. Rome it was this m in the yearless region of dreams.
John Ferris awoke in a room in a New York hotel. He had the feeling that something unpleasant was awaiting him -- what it was, he did not know. The feeling, submerged by matinal ies, lingered even after he had dressed and gone downstairs. It was a cloudless autumn day and the pale sunlight sliced between the pastel skyscrapers. Ferris went into the -dostore and sat at the end booth o the window glass that overlooked the sidewalk. He ordered an Ameri breakfast with scrambled eggs and sausage.
Ferris had e from Paris to his fathers funeral which had taken place the week before in his home town in Geia. The shock of death had made him aware of youth already passed. His hair was reg and the veins in his now emples were pulsing and promi and his body are except for an incipient belly bulge. Ferris had loved his father and the boween them had once beeraordinarily close -- but the years had somehow unraveled this filial devotion; the death, expected for a long time, had left him with an unforeseen dismay. He had stayed as long as possible to be near his mother and brothers at home. His plane for Paris was to leave the m.
Ferris pulled out his address book to verify a number. He turhe pages with growing attentiveness. Names and addresses from New York, the capitals of Europe, a few faint ones from his home state in the South. Faded, printed names, sprawled drunken ones. Betty Wills: a random love, married now. Charlie Williams: wounded in the Hurtgen Forest, unheard of since. Grand old Williams -- did he live or die? Don Walker: a B.T.O. in televisioing rich. Henry Green: hit the skids after the war, in a sanitarium now, they say. Cozie Hall: he had heard that she was dead. Heedless, laughing Cozie -- it was strao think that she too, silly girl, could die. As Ferris closed the address book, he suffered a sense of hazard, transience, almost of fear.
It was then that his body jerked suddenly. He was staring out of the window when there, on the sidewalk, passing by, was his ex-wife. Elizabeth passed quite close to him, walking slowly. He could not uand the wild quiver of his heart, nor the following sense of recklessness and grace that lingered after she was gone.
Quickly Ferris paid his ched rushed out to the sidewalk. Elizabeth stood on the er waiting to cross Fifth Avenue. He hurried toward her meaning to speak, but the lights ged and she crossed the street before he reached her. Ferris followed. Oher side he could easily have overtaken her, but he found himself lagging unatably. Her fair brown hair lainly rolled, and as he watched her Ferris recalled that once his father had remarked that Elizabeth had a "beautiful carriage." She tur the er and Ferris followed, although by now his iion to overtake her had disappeared. Ferris questiohe bodily disturbahat the sight of Elizabeth aroused in him, the dampness of his hands, the hard heart-strokes.
It was eight years since Ferris had last seen his ex-wife. He khat long ago she had married again. And there were children. Duri years he had seldom thought of her. But at first