eyes from one object to another--bird--sun-gilded stone--those
two small earth-worn faces--his hands--a stirring in the grass
as of some creature labouring to climb up. It was useless to sit
here any longer. He must go back now. Fancies were all very well
for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world
devoted to reality. He leaned his hand on the dark grey wood, and
closed his eyes. The lids presently unsealed a little, momentarily
revealing astonished, aggrieved pupils, and softly, slowly they
again descended....

The flaming rose that had swiftly surged from the west into the
zenith, dyeing all the churchyard grass a wild and vivid green,
and the stooping stones above it a pure faint purple, waned
softly back like a falling fountain into its basin. In a few
minutes, only a faint orange burned in the west, dimly
illuminating with its band of light the huddled figure on his low
wood seat, his right hand still pressed against a faintly beating
heart. Dusk gathered; the first white stars appeared; out of the
shadowy fields a nightjar purred. But there was only the silence
of the falling dew among the graves. Down here, under the
ink-black cypresses, the blades of the grass were stooping with
cold drops; and darkness lay like the hem of an enormous cloak,
whose jewels above the breast of its wearer might be in the
unfathomable clearness the glittering constellations....

In his small cage of darkness Lawford shuddered and raised a
furtive head. He stood up and peered eagerly and strangely from
side to side. He stayed quite still, listening as raptly as some
wandering night-beast to the indiscriminate stir and echoings of
the darkness. He cocked his head above his shoulder and listened