fine summer day, and
he went down to the playing fields to watch the cricket match. He sat
down in the shade of an oak tree on the unfrequented side, unable in the
mood he was in to ask against whom the College was playing or which side
was in. Players and spectators alike appeared unreal, a mirage of the
sunlight; the very landscape ceased to be anything more substantial than
a landscape perceived by dreamers in the clouds. The trees and towers of
Silchester, the bald hills of Berkshire on the horizon, the cattle in
the meadows, the birds in the air exasperated Mark with his inability to
put himself in the picture. The grass beneath the oak was scattered with
a treasury of small suns minted by the leaves above, trembling patens
and silver disks that Mark set himself to count.

"Trying not to yearn and trying not to yawn," he muttered. "Forty-four,
forty-five, forty-six."

"You're ten out," said a voice. "We want fifty-six to tie, fifty-seven
to win."

Mark looked up and saw that a Silchester man whom he remembered seeing
once at the Mission was preparing to sit down beside him. He was a tall
youth, fair and freckled and clear cut, perfectly self-possessed, but
lacking any hint of condescension in his manner.

"Didn't you come over with Rowley?" he inquired.

Mark was going to explain that he was working at the Mission when it
struck him that a Silchester man might have the right to resent that,
and he gave no more than a simple affirmative.

"I remember seeing you at the Mission," he went on. "My name's Hathorne.
Oh, well hit, sir, well hit!"

Hathorne's approbation of the batsman made the match appear even more
remote. It was like the comment of a passer-by upon a well-designed
figure in a tapestry. It was an expression of his own aesthetic pleasure,
and bore no relation to the player he applauded.

"I've only been down to the Mission once," he continued, turning to
Mark. "I felt rather up against it there."

"Well, I feel much more up against it in Silchester," replied Mark.

"Yes, I can understand that," Hathorne nodded. "But you're only up
against form: I was up against matter. It struck me when I was down
there what awful cheek it was for me to be calmly going down to Chatsea
and supposing that I had a right to go there, because I had contributed
a certain amount of money belonging to my father, to help spiritually a
lot of people who probably need spiritual help much less than I do
myself. Of course,