didn't answer. I wasn't going in--not yet at any rate. I really
couldn't. While he was calling me I was engaged in making my escape
through a little gate leading out upon a stretch of newly cleared
ground. No; I couldn't face them yet. I walked hastily with lowered head
along a trodden path. The ground rose gently, the few big trees had been
felled, the undergrowth had been cut down and the grass fired. He had a
mind to try a coffee-plantation there. The big hill, rearing its double
summit coal-black in the clear yellow glow of the rising moon, seemed
to cast its shadow upon the ground prepared for that experiment. He was
going to try ever so many experiments; I had admired his energy, his
enterprise, and his shrewdness. Nothing on earth seemed less real now
than his plans, his energy, and his enthusiasm; and raising my eyes, I
saw part of the moon glittering through the bushes at the bottom of the
chasm. For a moment it looked as though the smooth disc, falling from
its place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled to the bottom of that
precipice: its ascending movement was like a leisurely rebound; it
disengaged itself from the tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb of
some tree, growing on the slope, made a black crack right across its
face. It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this
mournful eclipse-like light the stumps of felled trees uprose very dark,
the heavy shadows fell at my feet on all sides, my own moving shadow,
and across my path the shadow of the solitary grave perpetually
garlanded with flowers. In the darkened moonlight the interlaced
blossoms took on shapes foreign to one's memory and colours indefinable
to the eye, as though they had been special flowers gathered by no man,
grown not in this world, and destined for the use of the dead alone.
Their powerful scent hung in the warm air, making it thick and heavy
like the fumes of incense. The lumps of white coral shone round the dark
mound like a chaplet of bleached skulls, and everything around was so
quiet that when I stood still all sound and all movement in the world
seemed to come to an end.

'It was a great peace, as if the earth had been one grave, and for a
time I stood there thinking mostly of the living who, buried in remote
places out of the knowledge of mankind, still are fated to share in its
tragic or grotesque miseries. In its noble struggles too--who knows?
The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world. It i