didn't interest me in the least. It didn't seem to signify. It
was like a wounded gull, you know--flapping for a time in the
water. I could see it down the aisle of the temple--a black thing
in the bright blue water.

"Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then
that ceased. Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in
and hid for a space. That was all the mischief done, except that
once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by--made just a fresh
bright surface.

"As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater.

"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who
makes a trivial conversation, "is that I didn't _think_--at
all. I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort of
lethargy--stagnant.

"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing
that day. I know I found myself in my office, with my letters all
slit open in front of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of
being there, seeing that in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that
Paestum Temple with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters
like a machine. I have forgotten what they were about."

He stopped, and there was a long silence.

Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline
from Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. I
turned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of "Now or