-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 passing of time. I
turned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of "Now or
never."

"And did you dream again?"

"Yes."

He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low.

"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed
to have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into
a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones beside me.
A gaunt body. Not her, you know. So soon--it was not her . . . .

"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly
that men were coming into the solitude and that that was a last
outrage.

"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came
into sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform
of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to
the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching
there. They were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there
they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.

"And further away I saw others and then more at another point
in the wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.

"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a
command, and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high
weeds towards the temple. He scrambled down with them and led
them. He came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped.

"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but
when I had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to
forbid them. I shouted to the officer.

"'You must not come here,' I cried, '_I_ am here. I am
here with my dead.'

"He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some
unknown tongue.

"I repeated what I had said.

"He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still.
Presently he spoke to his men and came forward. He carr