some very luminous painted window, as though this
dawn broke through me. I felt I was part of some exquisite picture
painted in light and joy.

A faint breeze bent and rustled the barley-heads, and jogged my
mind forward.

Who was I? That was a good way of beginning.

I held up my left hand and arm before me, a grubby hand, a frayed
cuff; but with a quality of painted unreality, transfigured as a
beggar might have been by Botticelli. I looked for a time steadfastly
at a beautiful pearl sleeve-link.

I remembered Willie Leadford, who had owned that arm and hand, as
though he had been some one else.

Of course! My history--its rough outline rather than the immediate
past--began to shape itself in my memory, very small, very bright
and inaccessible, like a thing watched through a microscope.
Clayton and Swathinglea returned to my mind; the slums and darkness,
Dureresque, minute and in their rich dark colors pleasing, and through
them I went towards my destiny. I sat hands on knees recalling that
queer passionate career that had ended with my futile shot into
the growing darkness of the End. The thought of that shot awoke my
emotions again.

There was something in it now, something absurd, that made me smile
pityingly.

Poor little angry, miserable creature! Poor little angry, miserable
world!

I sighed for pity, not only pity for myself, but for all the hot
hearts, the tormented brains, the straining, striving things of hope
and pain, who had found their peace at last beneath the pouring
mist and suffocation of the comet. Because certainly that world was
over and done. They were all so weak and unhappy, and I was now so
strong and so serene. For I felt sure I was dead; no one living
could have this perfect assurance of good, this strong and confident
peace. I had made an end of the fever called living. I was dead,
and it was all right, and these------?

I felt an inconsistency.

These, then, must be the barley fields of God!--the still and
silent barley fields of God, full of unfading poppy flowers whose
seeds bear peace.

Section 2

It was queer to find barley fields in heaven, but no doubt there
were many surprises in store for me.

How still everything was! Peace! The peace that passeth understanding.
After all it had come to me! But, indeed, everything was very still!
No bird sang. Surely I was alone in the world! No birds sang. Yes,
and all the distant sounds of life had ceased, the lowing
of