set out to return home across the hills.

"She was here with me yesterday; how beautiful she looked, and how
graceful were her laughter and speech," he said, turning suddenly and
looking down on the landscape; on the massy trees contrasting with the
walls of the town, the spine-like bridge crossing the marshy shore, the
sails of the mill turning over the crest of the hill. The night was
falling fast, as a blue veil it hung down over the sea, but the deep
pure sky seemed in one spot to grow clear, and suddenly the pale moon
shone and shimmered upon the sea. The landscape gained in loveliness,
the sheep seemed like phantoms, the solitary barns like monsters of the
night. And the hills were like giants sleeping, and the long outlines
were prolonged far away into the depths and mistiness of space. Turning
again and looking through a vista in the hills, John could see Brighton,
a pale cloud of fire, set by the moon-illumined sea, and nearer was
Southwick, grown into separate lines of light, that wandered into and
lost themselves among the outlying hollows of the hills; and below him
and in front of him Shoreham lay, a blaze of living fire, a thousand
lights; lights everywhere save in one gloomy spot, and there John knew
that his beloved was lying dead. And further away, past the shadowy
marshy shores, was Worthing, the palest of nebulae in these earthly
constellations; and overhead the stars of heaven shone as if in pitiless
disdain. The blown hawthorn bush that stands by the burgh leaned out, a
ship sailed slowly across the rays of the moon. Yesterday they parted
here in the glad golden sunlight, parted for ever, for ever.

"Yesterday I had all things--a sweet wife and happy youthful days to
look forward to. To-day I have nothing; all my hopes are shattered, all
my illusions have fallen. So is it always with him who places his trust
in life. Ah, life, life, what hast thou for giving save cruel deceptions
and miserable wrongs? Ah, why did I leave my life of contemplation and
prayer to enter into that of desire.... Ah, I knew, well I knew there
was no happiness save in calm and contemplation. Ah, well I knew; and
she is gone, gone, gone!"

We suffer differently indeed, but we suffer equally. The death of his
sweetheart forces one man to reflect anew on the slightness of life's
pleasures and the depth of life's griefs. In the peaceful valley of
natural instincts and affections he had slept for a while, now he awoke
on one of