As he caught himself with this thought in his mind he smiled at his own grandiose self-consciousness. Stoicism! That’s what a man needed, made as he was made! Stoical endurance of whatever fate the gods rained down upon his head! No Trojan, no Roman, would blink and whimper at the thought of Lenty Pond.

It was not long before he reached the very spot where on the night of the bowling-match he had climbed over the hedge with Christie, into the cornfield.⁠ ⁠…

Moved to what he did by an obscure sense that this might be “the last time,” he hurriedly scrambled through the thickset hedge. The field was evidently destined to lie fallow that season. He found a rusty barrow, with its wooden shafts protruding into the air like the horns of a buried monster; and upon this he sat down. The sun had disappeared now, and he felt disposed to let the twilight fall about him in that place of memory.