quietened the demands of that other feebly
struggling personality which was beginning to insinuate itself into his
consciousness, which had so miraculously broken in and taken possession
of his body. He would not think now. All he needed was a little quiet
and patience before he threw off for good and all his right to be free,
to be his own master, to call himself sane.

He scrambled up and turned his face towards the westering sun. What was
there in the stillness of its beautiful splendour that seemed to sharpen
his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him to such a daring and
devilry as he had never known since he was a boy? There was little sound
of life; somewhere an unknown bird was singing, and a few late bees were
droning in the bracken. All these years he had, like an old blind horse,
stolidly plodded round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now,
just when the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless
truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He sat
there with the dusky silhouette of the face that was now drenched with
sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again up the stony incline.

Why not walk on and on? In time real wholesome weariness would come; he
could sleep at ease in some pleasant wayside inn, without once meeting
the eyes that stood as it were like a window between himself and a
shrewd incredulous scoffing world that would turn him into a monstrosity
and his story into a fable. And in a little while, perhaps in three
days, he would awaken out of this engrossing nightmare, and know he
was free, this black dog gone from his back, and (as the old saying
expressed it without any one dreaming what it really meant) his own
man again. How astonished Sheila would be; how warmly she would welcome
him!... Oh yes, of course she would.

He came again to a standstill. No voice answered him out of that
illimitable gold and blue. Nothing seemed aware of him. But as he stood
there, doubtful as Cain on the outskirts of the unknown, he caught the
sound of a footfall on the lonely and stone-strewn path.

The ground sloped steeply away to the left, and slowly mounting the
hillside came mildly on an old lady he knew, a Miss Sinnet, an old
friend of his mother's. There was just such a little seat as that
other he knew so well, on the brow of the hill. He made his way to it,
intending to sit quietly there until the little old lady had passed by.
Up and up she came. Her large bon