I made up by day for the sleep I had lost at night. After a bath I went home dead tired. I darkened my bedroom and as I undressed I came on the verses in my pocket; but I fot them again and lay down forthwith. I fot Maria and Hermine and the Masked Ball and slept the clock round. It was not till I had got up in the evening and was shaving that I remembered that the Ball began in an hour and that I had to find a dress shirt. I got myself ready in very good humor a out thereafter to have dinner.
It was the first masked ball I was to participate in. In earlier days, it is true, I had now and again attended such festivities and even sometimes found them very eaining, but I had never danced. I had been a speerely. As for the enthusiasm with which others had talked and rejoiced over them in my hearing, it had always struck me as id now the day had e for me too to find the occasion one of almost painful suspense. As I had no parto take, I decided not to go till late. This, too, Hermine had seled me.
I had seldom of late been to the Steel Helmet, my former refuge, where the disappointed men sat out their evenings, soaking in their wine and playing at bachelor life. It did not suit the life I had e to lead sihis evening, however, I was drawn to it before I was aware. In the mood between joy ahat fate and parting imposed on me just now, all the stations and shrines of meditation in my lifes pilgrimage caught once more that gleam of pain ay that es from things past; and so too had the little tavern, thick with smoke, among whose patrons I had lately been numbered and whose primitive opiate of a bottle of cheap wine had lately heartened me enough to spend one more night in my lonely bed and to endure life for one more day. I had tasted other specifid stroimulus sihen, and sipped a sweeter poison. With a smile I ehe a hostel. The landlady greeted me and so, with a nod, did the silent pany of habitués. A roast chi was ended and soo before me. The limpid Elsasser sparkled ihick peasant glass. The white wooden tables and the old yellow paneling had a friendly look. And while I ate and drank there came over me that feeling of ge and decay and of farewell celebrations, that sweet and inwardly painful feeling of being a living part of all the ses and all the things of an earlier life that has never yet been parted from, and from which the time to part has e. The modern man calls this seality. He has lost the love of inanimate objects. He does not even love his most sacred object, his motorcar, but is ever hoping to exge it as soon as he for a later model. This modern man has energy and ability. He is healthy, cool and strenuous—a splendid type, and in the war he will be a miracle of efficy. But all that was no of mine. I was not a modern man, nor an old-fashioned oher. I had escaped time altogether, a my way, with death at my elbow ah as my resolve. I bad no obje to sealities. I was glad and thankful to find a trace of anything like a feeling still remaining in my burned-out heart. So I let my memories of the old tavern and my attat to the solid wooden chairs and the smell of smoke and wine and the air of use and wont and warmth and homelihat the place had carry me away. There is beauty in farewells and a gentleness in their very tohe hard seat was dear to me, and so was the peasant glass and the cool racy taste of the Elsasser and my intimacy with all and everything in this room, and the faces of the bent and dreaming drinkers, those