the day when just that
was possible.... The thing conventionally in order for such a moment
as the present was to act as though that annihilation which each
wished upon the other had been achieved. All that they had shared
since the day when first they met, boys on a heath in Scotland, should
be instantaneously blotted out. Two strangers, jostled face to face in
a playhouse, should turn without sign that there had ever been that
heath. So, symbolically, annihilation might be secured! For a moment
each sought for the blank eyes, the unmoved stone face.

As from a compartment above sifted down a dry light with great power
of lighting. It came into Alexander's mind, into that, too, of Ian....
How absurd was the human animal! All this saying the opposite left the
truth intact. They were not strangers, each was quite securely seated
in the other. Self-annihilation--self-oblivion!... All these farcical
high horses!... Men went to see comedies and did not see their own
comedy.

The laird of Glenfernie and Ian Rullock each very slightly and coldly
acknowledged the other's presence. No words passed. But the slow
amenity of life bent by a fraction the head of each, just parted the
lips of each. Then Alexander turned with an abrupt movement of his
great body and with his companions was swallowed by the crowd.

On his bed that night, lying straight with his hands upon his breast,
he had for the space of one deep breath an overmastering sense of the
suaveness of reality. Crudity, angularity, harshness, seemed to
vanish, to dissolve. He knew dry beds of ancient torrents that were a
long and somewhat wide wilderness of mere broken rock, stone piece by
stone piece, and only the more jagged edges lost and only the surface
worn by the action, through ages, of water. It was as though such a
bed grew beneath his eyes meadow smooth--smoother than that--smooth as
air, air that lost nothing by yielding--smooth as ether that, yielding
all, yielded nothing.... The moment went, but left its memory. As the
moment was large so was its memory.

He fought against it with tribes of memories, lower and dwarfish, but
myriads strong. The bells from some convent rang, the December stars
blazed beyond his window, he put out his arms to the December cold.

Ian, despite that moment in the playhouse, looked for the arrival of a
second challenge from Glenfernie. For an instant it might be that they
had seen that things couldn't be so separate, after all