've talked and talked him nearly past his
patience. And then, when you are quite safely, oh yes, quite safely and
soundly gone, then I shall go away for a little, so that we can't even
hear each other speak, except in dreams. Life!--well, I always thought
it was much too plain a tale to have as dull an ending. And with us the
powers beyond have played a newer trick, that's all. Another hour, and
we will go. Till then there's just the solitary walk home and only the
dull old haunted house that hoards as many ghosts as we ourselves to
watch our coming.'

Evening began to shine between the trees; they seemed to stand aflame,
with a melancholy rapture in their uplifted boughs above their fading
coats. The fields of the garnered harvest shone with a golden stillness,
awhir with shimmering flocks of starlings. And the old birds that had
sung in the spring sang now amid the same leaves, grown older too to
give them harbourage.

Herbert was sitting in his room when they returned, nursing his teacup
on his knee while he pretended to be reading, with elbow propped on the
table.

'Here's Nicholas Sabathier, my dear, come to say goodbye awhile,'
said Grisel. She stood for a moment in her white gown, her face turned
towards the clear green twilight of the open window. 'I have promised to
walk part of the way with him. But I think first we must have some tea.
No; he flatly refuses to be driven. We are going to walk.'

The two friends were left alone, face to face with a rather difficult
silence, only the least degree of nervousness apparent, so far as
Herbert was concerned, in that odd aloof sustained air of impersonality
that had so baffled his companion in their first queer talk together.

'Your sister said just now, Herbert,' blurted Lawford at last. '"Here's
Nicholas Sabathier come to say good-bye" well, I--what I want you to
understand is that it is Sabathier, the worst he ever was; but also that
it is "good-bye."'

Herbert slowly turned. 'I don't quite see why "goodbye," Lawford.
And--frankly, there is nothing to explain. We have chosen to live such
a very out-of-the-way life,' he went on, as if following up a train of
thought.... 'The truth is if one wants to live at all--one's own life,
I mean--there's no time for many friends. And just steadfastly regarding
your neighbour's tail as you follow it down into the Nowhere--it's that
that seems to me the deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply go
one's own way, doing o