g of time. I turned on him with
a brutal question, with the tone of Now or never.

"And did you dream again?"

"Yes."

He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low.

"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed to have
suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting
position, and the body lay there on the stones beside me. A gaunt body.
Not her, you know. So soon--it was not her....

"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that men
were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage.

"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into
sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirty
white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of
the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were little
bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand,
peering cautiously before them.

"And further away I saw others and then more at another point in the
wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.

"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and
his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards the
temple. He scrambled down with them and led them. He came facing towards
me, and when he saw me he stopped.

"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when I
had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to forbid them. I
shouted to the officer.

"'You must not come here,' I cried, '_I_ am here. I am here with my
dead.'

"He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown
tongue.

"I repeated what I had said.

"He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still. Presently he
spoke to his men and came forward. He carried a drawn sword.

"I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. I told him
again very patiently and clearly: 'You must not come here. These are old
temples and I am here with my dead.'

"Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. It was a narrow
face, with dull grey eyes, and a black moustache. He had a scar on
his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting
unintelligible things, questions perhaps, at me.

"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not
occur to me. As I tried to explain to him he interrupted me in imperious
tones, bidding me, I suppose, stand aside.

"He made