They had been in painful conclave, as it seemed to Felix, all day, coming to the decision that those two young things should have their wish, marry, and go out to New Zealand.  The ranch of Cousin Alick Morton (son of that brother of Frances Freeland, who, absorbed in horses, had wandered to Australia and died in falling from them) had extended a welcome to Derek.  Those two would have a voyage of happiness—­see together the red sunsets in the Mediterranean, Pompeii, and the dark ants of men swarming in endless band up and down with their coal-sacks at Port Said; smell the cinnamon gardens of Colombo; sit up on deck at night and watch the stars. . . .  Who could grudge it them?  Out there youth and energy would run unchecked.  For here youth had been beaten!

On and on the old ‘fly’ rumbled between the shadowy fields.  ’The world is changing, Felix—­changing!’ Was that defeat of youth, then, nothing?  Under the crust of authority and wealth, culture and philosophy—­was the world really changing; was liberty truly astir, under that sky in the west all blood; and man rising at long last from his knees before the God of force?  The silent, empty fields darkened, the air gathered dewy thickness, and the old ‘fly’ rumbled and rolled as slow as fate.  Cottage lamps were already lighted for the evening meal.  No laborer abroad at this hour!  And Felix thought of Tryst, the tragic fellow—­the moving, lonely figure; emanation of these solitary fields, shade of the departing land!  One might well see him as that boy saw him, silent, dogged, in a gray light such as this now clinging above the hedgerows and the grass!

The old ‘fly’ turned into the Becket drive.  It had grown dark now, save for the half-moon; the last chafer was booming by, and a bat flitting, a little, blind, eager bat, through the quiet trees.  He got out to walk the last few hundred yards.  A lovely night, silent below her stars—­cool and dark, spread above field after field, wood on wood, for hundreds of miles on every side.  Night covering his native land.  The same silence had reigned out there, the same perfume stolen up, the same star-shine fallen, for millions of years in the past, and would for millions of years to come.  Close to where the half-moon floated, a slow, narrow, white cloud was passing—­curiously shaped.  At one end of it Felix could see distinctly the form of a gleaming skull, with dark sky showing through its eyeholes, cheeks, and mouth.  A queer phenomenon; fascinating, rather ghastly!  It grew sharper in outline, more distinct.  One of those sudden shudders, that seize men from the crown of the head to the very heels, passed down his back.  He shut his eyes.  And, instead, there came up before him Kirsteen’s blue-clothed figure turned to the sunset glow.  Ah!  Better to see that than this skull above the land!  Better to believe her words:  ’The world is changing, Felix—­changing!’