Though he gave the illusion of running rings around himself, though he often acted like a fool and an ignoramus, though he seemed to be doing nothing more than wasting time, actually everything he said or did had a vital bearing on the work in hand. Moreover, there was never just one case which occupied him exclusively. He had a hundred strings to his lyre. No case was ever too hopeless for him to drop. The company might have scratched it off the record—but not O'Rourke. He had the infinite patience of an artist, and with it the conviction that time was on his side. There didn't seem to be any phase of life with which he had not familiarized himself. Though, speaking of the artist, I must admit that perhaps in that realm he was least sure of himself. He could stand and look at the work of a pompier in a department store window with dewy eyes. His knowledge of literature was almost nil. But if, for example, I should happen to relate the story of Raskolnikov, as Dostoievski unfolded it for us, I could be certain of reaping the most penetrating observations. And what it was indeed that made me cherish his friendship, was the kinship he had, humanly and spiritually, with such writers as Dostoievski. His acquaintance with the underworld had softened and broadened him. He was a detective because of his extraordinary interest in and sympathy with his fellow-man. He never caused a man unnecessary pain. He always gave his man the wide benefit of the doubt. He never held a grudge against any one, no matter what the man had done. He sought to understand, to fathom their motives, even when they were of the basest. Above all, he was to be relied upon absolutely. His word, once given, was adhered to at any cost. Neither could he be bribed. I can't possibly imagine what temptation one could put before him to deflect him from the performance of his duty. A further point in his favor, in my opinion, was that he was totally lacking in ambition. He hadn't the slightest desire to be anything other than he was. He gave himself body and soul to his task, knowing that it was a thankless one, knowing that he was being used and abused by a heartless, soulless organization. But, as he himself had more than once remarked, whatever the attitude of the company might be was none of his concern. Nor did it matter to him that, in the event of retirement, they should undo everything be had labored to build up. Having no illusions, he nevertheless gave his utmost to all who made demands upon him.

He was a unique being, O'Rourke. He disturbed me profoundly sometimes. I don't think I've ever known any one before or since who made me feel quite so transparent as he did. Nor do I ever remember any one who so abstemiously withheld giving advice or criticism. He was the only man I've ever known who made me realize what it means to be tolerant, what it means to respect the other person's liberty. It's curious, now that I reflect on it, how deeply he symbolized the Law. Not the petty spirit of law which man uses for his own ends, but the inscrutable cosmic law which never ceases to work, which is implacable and just, and thus ultimately the most merciful.

As I lay in bed wide awake, I would, after an evening such as this one, often ask myself what O'Rourke would do it he were in my boots. In endeavoring to make the transposition it had occurred to me more than once that I knew nothing about O'Rourke's private life. Absolutely nothing. Not that he was evasive—I couldn't say that. It was just a blank. Somehow the subject never came up.

I don't know why I thought so, but I had the feeling that in some period long past he had suffered a great deception. A frustrated love, perhaps.

Whatever it was, he had not been soured by it. He had foundered and then recovered. But his life had been irreparably altered. Putting all the little pieces together, putting on one side the man I knew, and on the other side the man whom I caught glimpses of now and then (when he was in a reminiscent mood), comparing them one with the other, it was impossible to deny that they were two quite different beings. All those rugged, sterling qualities which O'Rourke possessed were like protective devices, worn not outwardly but inwardly. From the world he had little or nothing to fear. He was in it and of it, totally. But against the decrees of Fate he was powerless.

It was strange, I thought to myself as I closed my eyes, that the man I should owe so much to must remain forever a sealed book. I could only learn from his behavior and example.

A wave of tenderness swept over me. I understood O'Rourke in a bigger way than I had before. I understood everything more clearly. I understood for the first time what it really means to be «delicate».

13

There are days when the return to life is painful and distressing. One leaves the realm of sleep against one's will. Nothing has happened, except an awareness that the deeper and truer reality belongs to the world of the unconscious.

Thus one morning I opened my eyes involuntarily, struggling frantically to fall back into that condition of bliss in which dream had wrapped me. So chagrined was I to find myself awake that I was on the point of tears. I closed my eyes and tried to sink back again into the world from which I had been so cruelly ejected. It was useless. I tried every device I had ever heard of but I could no more accomplish the trick than one can stop a bullet in flight and restore it to the empty chamber of a revolver.

What remained, however, was the avira of the dream: in that I lingered voluptuously. Some deep purpose had been fulfilled, but before I had been given time to read the significance of it the slate had been sponged and I was thrust out, out into a world whose one solution for everything is death. There were only a few tangible shreds left in my hand and, as with those crumbs which the poor are supposed to gather from the tables of the rich, I clung to them greedily. But the crumbs dropped from the table of sleep are like the meagre facts in a crime whose solution must ever remain a mystery. Those dripping images which, in the act of awakening, one spirits across the threshold like a mystic smuggler, have a way of undergoing the most heart-rending transformations on the hither side. They melt like ice cream on a sultry day in August. And yet, as they merge toward the inchoate magma which is the very stuff of the soul, some blurred knot of remembrance keeps alive—forever, it would seem— the dim and velvety outline of a palpable, sentient continuum wherein they move and have, not their being, but reality. Reality! That which embraces, sustains and exalts life. It is in this stream that one craves to return and remain forever immersed. What remained then of that inextinguishable world from which I awakened one morning full of tender wounds that had been so skillfully staunched in the night? The face of the one I had loved and lost! Una Gifford. Not the Una I had known, but a Una whom years of pain and separation had magnified into a frightening loveliness. Her face had become like a heavy flower caught in darkness; it seemed transfixed by its own suffused glow. All those memories of her which I had jealously preserved and which had been lightly tamped down, like fine tobacco under the finger of a pipe smoker, had suddenly brought about a spontaneously combustible beautification. The pallor of her skin was heightened by the marble glow which the smouldering embers of memory awakened. The head turned slowly on the almost indistinguishable stem. The lips were parted in thirst; they were extraordinarily vivid and vulnerable. It seemed like the detached head of a dreamer seeking with eyes sealed to receive the hungry lips of one summoned from some remote place. And, like the convolvolutions of exotic plants which writhe and lash in the night, our lips with endless searching finally met, closed and sealed the wound which until then had bled unceasingly. It was a kiss that drowned the memory of every pain; it staunched and healed the wound. An endless time it lasted, a forgotten period, as between two unremembered dreams. And then, as though the folds of night had gently come between us, we were apart and gazing at each other, penetrating the flowing veils of darkness with a single hypnotic stare. Just as previously the wet lips had been glued together—like fluffy, fragile petals tossed by a storm—so now the eyes were joined, welded by the electric current of long withheld recognition. In neither instance did there seem to be the least operation of the mental faculties: all was mindless and unwilled. It was like the union of two magnets, of their dull gray termini; the ever searching parts had at last come together. In this still, charged coalescence another sensation gradually made itself known: the sound of our ancient voice. A single voice which spoke and answered simultaneously: a two-pronged note which sounded at first like interrogation but which always died away like the pleasurable lapping of a wave. It was difficult to realize at first that this monologue was really the marriage of two distinct voices; it was like the play of two fountains sending and receiving from the same source and with the same gush.