Unconscious, seemingly, of where he went, Mr. Stone walked with his eyes fixed on space.  His head jerked now and then, as a dried flower will shiver in a draught.

Scared at these movements, Thyme took his arm.  The touch of that soft young arm squeezing his own brought speech back to Mr. Stone.

“In those places....” he said, “in those streets! ...I shall not see the flowering of the aloe—­I shall not see the living peace!  ’As with dogs, each couched over his proper bone, so men were living then!’” Thyme, watching him askance, pressed still closer to his side, as though to try and warm him back to every day.

‘Oh!’ went her guttered thoughts.  ’I do wish grandfather would say something one could understand.  I wish he would lose that dreadful stare.’

Mr. Stone spoke in answer to his granddaughter’s thoughts.

“I have seen a vision of fraternity.  A barren hillside in the sun, and on it a man of stone talking to the wind.  I have heard an owl hooting in the daytime; a cuckoo singing in the night.”

“Grandfather, grandfather!”

To that appeal Mr. Stone responded:  “Yes, what is it?”

But Thyme, thus challenged, knew not what to say, having spoken out of terror.

“If the poor baby had lived,” she stammered out, “it would have grown up....  It’s all for the best, isn’t it?”

“Everything is for the best,” said Mr. Stone. “’In those days men, possessed by thoughts of individual life, made moan at death, careless of the great truth that the world was one unending song.’”

Thyme thought:  ‘I have never seen him as bad as this!’ She drew him on more quickly.  With deep relief she saw her father, latchkey in hand, turning into the Old Square.

Stephen, who was still walking with his springy step, though he had come on foot the whole way from the Temple, hailed them with his hat.  It was tall and black, and very shiny, neither quite oval nor positively round, and had a little curly brim.  In this and his black coat, cut so as to show the front of him and cover the behind, he looked his best.  The costume suited his long, rather narrow face, corrugated by two short parallel lines slanting downwards from his eyes and nostrils on either cheek; suited his neat, thin figure and the close-lipped corners of his mouth.  His permanent appointment in the world of Law had ousted from his life (together with all uncertainty of income) the need for putting on a wig and taking his moustache off; but he still preferred to go clean-shaved.

“Where have you two sprung from?” he inquired, admitting them into the hall.

Mr. Stone gave him no answer, but passed into the drawing-room, and sat down on the verge of the first chair he came across, leaning forward with his hands between his knees.

Stephen, after one dry glance at him, turned to his daughter.

“My child,” he said softly, “what have you brought the old boy here for?  If there happens to be anything of the high mammalian order for dinner, your mother will have a fit.”