Then there was a painful pause. Not one of the three men spoke.
Finally Yester said: "Sir George, if you are going home——"
"Certainly," said the physician, seeing his distress and anticipating his wish. "I will set you down at your door if you like."
"Thank you," the boy said, struggling to his feet. "This room suffocates me."
"The fresh air will put you quite all right," said the doctor, walking beside him but not offering him physical help. "Quite all right."
And they went out and Hal was alone.
"Poor boy," he said. "Poor boy!"
He put his two hands to his head, and pressed the temples. Was it real or was it a dream? He drifted into the chair at the writing-table, and put his elbows on the desk and rested his chin in his hands, looking into space, trying to understand. Some one had left a current magazine open on the table. His vacant gaze wandered across a dull level of meaningless words to a hill which stood up alone and seemed to call to him, to have a message for him:
"These are my people, and this my land,
I hear the pulse of her secret soul;
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple, and sane and whole."[1]
[1] Lawrence Hope.