at his knuckles.

He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.

"I carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my arms--as though it
mattered. I don't know why. They seemed a sort of sanctuary, you know,
they had lasted so long, I suppose.

"She must have died almost instantly. Only--I talked to her--all the
way."

Silence again.

"I have seen those temples," I said abruptly, and indeed he had brought
those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me.

"It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar
and held her in my arms.... Silent after the first babble was over. And
after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though
nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed.... It was
tremendously still there, the sun high, and the shadows still; even the
shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still--in spite of the
thudding and banging that went all about the sky.

"I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and
that the battle went away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, and
overset and fell. I remember that--though it didn't interest me in
the least. It didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you
know--flapping for a time in the water. I could see it down the aisle of
the temple--a black thing in the bright blue water.

"Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased.
Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space.
That was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed
the stone hard by--made just a fresh bright surface.

"As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater.

"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who makes a
trivial conversation, "is that I didn't THINK--I didn't think at all.
I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort of
lethargy--stagnant.

"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing that day. I
know I found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in front
of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that
in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Paestum temple with a dead
woman in my arms. I read my letters like a machine. I have forgotten
what they were about."

He stopped, and there was a long silence.

Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from Chalk
Farm to Euston. I started at this passin