Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/148

 been hatched, and in what nest; and finding them afloat without any origin which his imagination could picture—with nothing above them, nothing below them, and on all sides nothing from which they had come or to which they could return—a fear seized him, an almost physical fear of dropping, as if in the darkness of a nightmare, into this unfathomable mystery in the midst of which he lived; and he opened his eyes on the sunlight with a start, his forehead wet with perspiration, taking his breath in a tremor and feeling the round world swimming below him like a great balloon which might, at any moment, burst and fall into the shuddering depths that were below it.

One night, late in April, Conroy came into the room, took off his brown derby and his spring overcoat, sat down on the side of the bed and said: "Well, I've come to stay."

Don looked up at him and closed his text-book. "What do you mean?"

"I've been put out of Residence."

Don raised the shade of his lamp to get the light on his cousin's face, and then quickly dropped the shadow down over him again. One glimpse of the faltering challenge of that twisted smile was sufficient. He reached his pen-knife and began snapping the blade back and forth against the flat of his thumb. "The Dean's been after me ever since I went in—and he caught me last night—celebrating Pittsey's birthday—with some of the boys—the sneak! And I told him he was, too," he boasted, "and if he'd said