falling ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if
through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her.
But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was
saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the
voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn at Pangbourne.

"You won't know till afterward," it said. "You won't know till
long, long afterward."



The End of Afterward




THE FULNESS OF LIFE
December 1893


I.


For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike
that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer
noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and
insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow-grasses, one
looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast
shadowless, and unsuggestive blue. Now and then, at ever-
lengthening intervals, a flash of pain darted through her, like