"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who

makes a trivial conversation, "is that I didn't THINK--I didn't

think at all. I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort

of lethargy--stagnant.



"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing that day.

I know I found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open

in front of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of being

there, seeing that in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Paestum

temple with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters like a machine.

I have forgotten what they were about."



He stopped, and there was a long silence.



Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from

Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. I turned

on him with a brutal question, with the tone of Now or never.



"And did you dream again?"



"Yes."



He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low.



"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed

to have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen

into a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones beside

me. A gaunt body. Not her, you know. So soon--it was not her. . . .



"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that

men were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage.



"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into

sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform

of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing

to the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching

there. They were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there

they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.



"And further away I saw others and then more at another point

in the wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.



"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command,

and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds

towards the temple. He scrambled down with them and led them.

He came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped.



"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when

I had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to forbid



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