those of a child who has trespassed beyond its hour
for bed, and sits marvelling at reality in a waking dream.

Long after they had bidden each other good-night, long after Herbert
had trodden on tiptoe with his candle past his closed door, Lawford
sat leaning on his arms at the open window, staring out across the
motionless moonlit trees that seemed to stand like draped and dreaming
pilgrims, come to the peace of their Nirvana at last beside the crashing
music of the waters. And he himself, the self that never sleeps beneath
the tides and waves of consciousness, was listening, too, almost as
unmovedly and unheedingly to the thoughts that clashed in conflict
through his brain.

Why, in a strange transitory life was one the slave of these small
cares? What if even in that dark pit beneath, which seemed to whisper
Lethe to the tumultuous, swirling waters--what if there, too, were
merely a beginning again, and to seek a slumbering refuge there merely a
blind and reiterated plunge into the heat and tumult of another day? Who
was that poor, dark, homeless ghoul, Sabathier? Who was this Helen of an
impossible dream? Her face with its strange smile, her eyes with their
still pity and rapt courage had taken hope away. 'Here's not your rest,'
cried one insistent voice; 'she is the mystery that haunts day and
night, past all the changing of the restless hours. Chance has given you
back eyes to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance and the stirrings
of a long-gone life have torn down the veil age spins so thick and fast.
Pride and ambition; what dull fools men are! Effort and duty, what dull
fools men are!' He listened on and on to these phantom pleadings and to
the rather coarse old Lawford conscience grunting them mercilessly down,
too weary even to try to rest.

Rooks at dawn came sweeping beneath the turquoise of the sky. He saw
their sharp-beaked heads turn this way, that way, as they floated on
outspread wings across the misty world. Except for the hoarse roar of
the water under the huge thin-leafed trees, not a sound was stirring.
'One thing,' he seemed to hear himself mutter as he turned with a shiver
from the morning air, 'it won't be for long. You can, at least, poor
devil, wait the last act out.' If in this foolish hustling mob of the
world, hired anywhere and anywhen for the one poor dubious wage of a
penny--if it was only his own small dull part to carry a mock spear,
and shout huzza with the rest--there was noth