He did not look back after they separated, but the sound of her light-running footsteps made his heart feel desolately empty.

His last hope of recovering his old self seemed to sink down like a child’s sagging balloon, pricked by a bodkin.

“She doesn’t know. She’s full of Olwen; and she doesn’t know,” he said to himself. But could he have made her know, even if he’d gone back with her? She didn’t ask him to go back. Why should she? But could he have made her know, even if she had? He had never told a living soul about his “mythology.”

He grasped his stick by the middle now; and in place of William of Deloraine, there came into his head the Homeric description of Hector of Troy, when, with his great spear held in just that way, he imposed a truce upon the combatants!