with, his bride; but there
were all the other memories too, the little silent memories, the
nothings, the everythings of daily life together; small joys, small
sorrows. The breakfast-table, Kitty behind the coffee, reading aloud to
him some scrap of her morning budget; the garden, Kitty showing him how
a new flower was thriving; Kitty riding beside him in the dew to an
early meet; and, suddenly, among all the trivial memories, the solemn
one that hardly seemed to go with Kitty at all,--Kitty's face looking up
at him, disfigured with grief and pain, as he told her that their
child--it had died at birth--was dead.

The other women, the interesting ones, the women who, more or less, knew
their way about his mind and soul, were forgotten, blotted out
completely by the trivial and the solemn memories. He felt no desire to
see them, no desire at all to say good-bye to them; that would be to
bring them near. But he did want to see Kitty, at once. She was not near
mind or soul; but she was near as life is near; near like the pulse of
his heart; and, with all the other things, he felt, suddenly, that Kitty
was his child, too, and that paternal yearning was mingled with the
crying out of his whole nature towards her. For it was crying out; and,
if she was his child, in what deep strange sense was he not her child,
too.

The wide world, the real world, the outside world of work and
achievement, collapsed like a crumpled panorama; he was covering his
eyes; he was shuddering; he was stumbling back to the nest, wounded to
death, there to fold himself in darkness, in oblivion, in love.--How
near we are to the animal, he thought, smiling, with trembling lips, as
he saw the station slide outside the windows at last, saw the face of
the station-master--he had never before known that the station-master
was such a lovable person--he seemed so near the nest that he must be
lovable--saw, beyond the flower-wreathed palings, the dog-cart waiting
for him. But his deeper self rebuked the cynical side-glance. The
trembling smile, he knew, had more of truth:--how near we are to the
divine. The pain and ecstasy of this moment of arrival made it one of
the most vivid and significant of his life. Almost worth while to know
that one is to die in a month if the knowledge brings with it such
flashes of beauty of vision. The whole earth seemed transfigured and
heavenly.

Dean, the coachman, gave acquiescent answers to his questions on the
homeward dr