“Can you hear?” asked a voice from out the hum of sound, speaking in the clear, high tone one uses to a deaf man.

Another voice, he was not sure whether it was his own or a stranger’s—­repeated from a distance, “Can I hear?”

“Did you see who shot you?” said the voice.

And the second voice repeated after it:  “Did I see who shot me?”

“Was it Abner Revercomb?” asked the first voice.

He knew then what they meant, and suddenly he began to think lucidly and rapidly like a person under the mental pressure of strong excitement or of alcohol.  Everything showed distinctly to him, and he saw with this wonderful distinctness, that it made no difference whether it was Abner Revercomb or one of his own multitude of selves that had shot him.  It made no difference—­nothing mattered except to regain the ineffable sense of approaching discovery which he had lost.

“Was it Abner Revercomb?” said the first voice more loudly.

He was conscious now of himself and of his surroundings, and there was no uncertainty, no hesitation in his answer.

“It was an accident.  I shot myself,” he said, and after a moment he added angrily, “Why should anybody shoot me?  It would be ridiculous.”

It was there again—­the unexplored, the incalculable vastness.  If they would only leave him alone he might recover it before it eluded him.

CHAPTER XVI

THE END

In the middle of the afternoon Molly went into the spare room in the west wing, and stopped beside the high white bed on which Gay was lying, with the sheet turned down from his face.  In death his features wore a look of tranquil brightness, of arrested energy, as if he had paused suddenly for a brief space, and meant to rise and go on again about the absorbing business of living.  The windows were open, and through the closed shutters floated a pale greenish light and the sound of dead leaves rustling softly in the garden.

She had hardly entered before the door opened noiselessly again, and Kesiah came in bringing some white roses in a basket.  Drawing a little away, Molly watched her while she arranged the flowers with light and guarded movements, as if she were afraid of disturbing the sleeper.  Of what was she thinking? the girl wondered.  Was she grieving for her lost youth, with its crushed possibilities of happiness, or for the rich young life before her, which had left its look of arrested energy still clinging to the deserted features?  Was she saddened by the tragic mystery of Death or by the more poignant, the more inscrutable mystery of Life?  Did she mourn all the things that had not been that did not matter, or all the things that had been that mattered even less?