deeply. He was tender and beautiful.
"The rain!" he said.
"Yes--is it coming on you?"
She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his shoulders, to feel if
the raindrops fell on him. She loved him dearly. He, as he lay with his
face on the dead pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet. He did not
mind if the raindrops came on him: he would have lain and got wet
through: he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his living were smeared
away into the beyond, near and quite lovable. This strange, gentle
reaching-out to death was new to him.
"We must go," said Miriam.
"Yes," he answered, but did not move.
To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death,
and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be
urgent and insistent--that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt
out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being.
"The rain is coming in on us," said Miriam.
He rose, and assisted her.
"It is a pity," he said.
"What?"
"To have to go. I feel so still."
"Still!" she repeated.
"Stiller than I have ever been in my life."
He was walking with his hand in hers. She pressed his fingers, feeling
a slight fear. Now he seemed beyond her; she had a fear lest she should
lose him.
"The fir-trees are like presences on the darkness: each one only a
presence."
She was afraid, and said nothing.
"A sort of hush: the whole night wondering and asleep: I suppose that's
what we do in death--sleep in wonder."
She had been afraid before of the brute in him: now of the mystic. She
trod beside him in silence. The rain fell with a heavy "Hush!" on the
trees. At last they gained the cartshed.
"Let us stay here awhile," he said.
There was a sound of rain everywhere, smothering everything.
"I feel so strange and still," he said; "along with everything."
"Ay," she answered patiently.
He seemed again unaware of her, though he held her hand close.
"To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our
effort--to live effortless, a kind of curious sleep--that is very
beautiful, I think; that is our after-life--our immortality."
"Yes?"
"Yes--and very beautiful to have."
"You don't usually say that."
"No."
In a while they went indoors. Everybody looked at them curiously. He
still kept the quiet, heavy look in his eyes, the stillness in his
voice. Instinctively, they all left him alone.
About this time Miriam's grandmother, who lived in a tiny cottage in
Woodlinton, fell ill, and the girl was sent to keep house. It was a
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