“Why don’t you tell me what’s the matter, boy?” repeated Miss Gault. “Don’t you care anything about me? Is my friendship of no value to you at all?”

Her words seemed as much a part of the balmy light-fluttering air above him as his own body was a part of the earth-mould below him.

Feebly, with less energy than he had used to brush away the flies from the bottle, he analyzed his inertia. “I have killed my life-illusion,” he thought. “I am as dead as William Solent. I’ve got no pride, no will, no identity left.” He fixed his eyes on his father’s headstone, across which there kept fluttering the shadow of an unbudded branch from a little tree near the fence. He tried to visualize the skull under that mound. It was still of the skull, rather than of coffin or skeleton, that he thought! But this also seemed to have lost its identity. No cynical grin came back towards him from down there. No sardonic commentary upon his predicament rose to mock him or to reassure him.

Suddenly he was aware that Miss Gault was speaking rapidly, excitedly.