terrific uproar had subsided into a distant, dull rumbling mingled
with the pattering dash of hail.

"I care for it--yes!" replied Alwyn, and his voice was very low
and dreamy. "For though the world is a graveyard, as I have said,
full of unmarked tombs, still here and there we find graves, such
as Shelley's or Byron's, whereon pale flowers, like sweet
suggestions of ever-silenced music, break into continuous bloom.
And shall I not win my own death-garland of asphodel?"

There was an indescribable, almost heart-rending pathos in his
manner of uttering these last words--a hopelessness of effort and
a despairing sense of failure which he himself seemed conscious
of, for, meeting the fixed and earnest gaze of Ileliobas, he
quickly relapsed into his usual tone of indolent indifference.

"You see," he said, with a forced smile, "my story is not very
interesting! No hairbreadth escapes, no thrilling adventures, no
love intrigues--nothing but mental misery, for which few people
have any sympathy. A child with a cut finger gets more universal
commiseration than a man with a tortured brain and breaking heart,
yet there can be no quotion as to which is the most intense duel
long enduring anguish of the two. However, such as my troubles are
I have told you all I have laid bare my 'wound of living'--a
wound that throbs and burns, and aches, more intolerably with
every pissing hour and day--it is not unnatural, I think, that I
should seek for a little cessation of suffering; a brief dreaming
space in which to rest for a while, and escape from the deathful
Truth--Truth, that like the flaming sword placed east of the
fabled garden of Eden, turns ruthlessly every way, keeping us out