ich he was soon to be returning,
and for good. He began to realize how ludicrous a spectacle he must be,
kneeling here amid the weeds and grass beneath the solemn cypresses.
'Well, you can't have everything,' seemed loosely to express his
disquiet.

He stared vacantly at the green and fretted gravestone, dimly aware that
his heart was beating with an unusual effort. He felt ill and weak. He
leant his hand on the stone and lifted himself on to the low wooden
seat nearby. He drew off his glove and thrust his bare hand under his
waistcoat, with his mouth a little ajar, and his eyes fixed on the dark
square turret, its bell sharply defined against the evening sky.

'Dead!' a bitter inward voice seemed to break into speech; 'Dead!'
The viewless air seemed to be flocking with hidden listeners. The very
clearness and the crystal silence were their ambush. He alone seemed to
be the target of cold and hostile scrutiny. There was not a breath to
breathe in this crisp, pale sunshine. It was all too rare, too thin. The
shadows lay like wings everlastingly folded. The robin that had been
his only living witness lifted its throat, and broke, as if from the
uttermost outskirts of reality, into its shrill, passionless song.
Lawford moved heavy eyes from one object to another--bird--sun-gilded
stone--those two small earth-worn faces--his hands--a stirring in the
grass as of some creature labouring to climb up. It was useless to sit
here any longer. He must go back now. Fancies were all very well for
a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to
reality. He leaned his hand on the dark grey wood, and closed his eyes.
The lids presently unsealed a little, momentarily revealing astonished,
aggrieved pupils, and softly, slowly they again descended....

The flaming rose that had swiftly surged from the west into the zenith,
dyeing all the churchyard grass a wild and vivid green, and the stooping
stones above it a pure faint purple, waned softly back like a falling
fountain into its basin. In a few minutes, only a faint orange burned in
the west, dimly illuminating with its band of light the huddled figure
on his low wood seat, his right hand still pressed against a faintly
beating heart. Dusk gathered; the first white stars appeared; out of the
shadowy fields a nightjar purred. But there was only the silence of the
falling dew among the graves. Down here, under the ink-black cypresses,
the blades of the grass were stoop