f in spite
of his meditations just now. She at least respected his sorrow, he
told himself. She bore herself very naturally, though with long
silences, and never once met his eyes with her own. He made his
excuses as soon as he could and slipped across to the stable yard. At
least he would be alone this afternoon. Only, as he rode away half an
hour later, he caught a sight of the slender little figure of his
mother waiting to have one word with him if she could, beyond the
hall-door. But he set his lips and would not see her.

It was one of those perfect September days that fall sometimes as a
gift from heaven after the bargain of summer has been more or less
concluded. As he rode all that afternoon through lanes and across
uplands, his view barred always to the north by the great downs above
Royston, grey-blue against the radiant sky, there was scarcely a hint
in earth or heaven of any emotion except prevailing peace. Yet the
very serenity tortured him the more by its mockery. The birds babbled
in the deep woods, the cheerful noise of children reached him now and
again from a cottage garden, the mellow light smiled unending
benediction, and yet his subconsciousness let go for never an instant
of the long elm box six feet below ground, and of its contents lying
there in the stifling dark, in the long-grassed churchyard on the hill
above his home.

He wondered now and again as to the fate of the spirit that had
informed the body and made it what it was; but his imagination refused
to work. After all, he asked himself, what were all the teachings
of theology but words gabbled to break the appalling silence?
Heaven ... Purgatory ... Hell. What was known of these things? The very
soul itself--what was that? What was the inconceivable environment,
after all, for so inconceivable a thing...?

He did not need these things, he said--certainly not now--nor those
labels and signposts to a doubtful, unimaginable land. He needed Amy
herself, or, at least, some hint or sound or glimpse to show him that
she indeed was as she had always been; whether in earth or heaven, he
did not care; that there was somewhere something that was herself,
some definite personal being of a continuous consciousness with that
which he had known, characterized still by those graces which he
thought he had recognized and certainly loved. Ah! he did not ask
much. It would be so easy to God! Here out in this lonely lane where
he rode beneath the branches