lesome
about it. It may make you a bit sleepy, that's all.'

Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond was
speaking to him, but for the life of him he could not rouse himself from
his lethargy. He could only think of the lonely walk he had taken
fifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he had
known since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliant light,
as a picture, before him. Above all there came to his nostrils the scent
of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the woods, of
cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by the sun's
heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were with arms
stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies made him
wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood,
tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees;
and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a
clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle
with other recollections; the beech alley was transformed to a path
beneath ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to
bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and
the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the
dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was
conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an
undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all,
when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite
silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a
moment of time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was
neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things
mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that
moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed
to cry 'Let us go hence,' and then the darkness of darkness beyond the
stars, the darkness of everlasting.

When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops of
some oily fluid into a green phial, which he stoppered tightly.

'You have been dozing,' he said; 'the journey must have tired you out.
It is done now. I am going to fetch Mary; I shall be back in ten
minutes.'

Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered. It seemed as if he had but
passed from one dream into another. He h