readily they forget! How eagerly they fling the pack of their old world
from off their shoulders! He had seen, perhaps, so many go, thus
lustily, upon their way, and then how many, at the end of it all,
tired, worn, beaten to their very shadows, had he received at the end!

But it was so. This day was to see Henry Fitzgeorge's assertions of his
independence. The hour when this life was to close, so definitely, so
securely, the doors upon that other, had come. The shadow that had been
so vast that it had filled the room, the Square, the world, was drawn
now into small and human size.

Henry Fitzgeorge was never again to look so old.


V

As the fine, dim afternoon was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour
before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had
with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was
comfortable; he had no personal feeling about it.

His mother came in.

"Let me have him for half an hour, nurse. Come back in half an hour's
time."

The nurse left them.

Henry Fitzgeorge did not look at his mother.