"Time's up," said Valentine, looking at his watch, "and there's my dog-cart coming round to the door."
The youth rose then with a sigh, took leave of Valentine, and reluctantly turned towards the house, all the young Mortimers following. They were rather late for the train, so that the parting was hurried, and poor little Gladys as she gazed after the dog-cart, while Johnnie drove and Crayshaw looked back, felt a great aching pain at her heart, and thought she should never forget him.
But perhaps she did.
The young Mortimers were to leave Melcombe themselves the next day, and Valentine was to accompany them home, sleeping one night at their father's house by way of breaking his journey, and seeing his family before he started on his voyage.
He was left alone, and watched his guests as their receding figures were lost among the blossoming trees. He felt strangely weak that afternoon, but he was happy. The lightness of heart that comes of giving up some wrong or undesirable course of action (one that he thought wrong) might long have been his, but he had not hitherto been able to get away from the scene of it.
To-morrow he was to depart. Oh, glad to-morrow!
He laid himself back in his seat, and looked at the blue hills, and listened to the sweet remote voices of the children, let apple-blossoms drop all over him, peered through great brown boughs at the empty sky, and lost himself in a sea of thought which seemed almost as new to him and as fathomless as that was.
Not often does a man pass his whole life before him and deliberately criticize himself, his actions and his way.
If he does, it is seldom when he would appear to an outsider to have most reasonable occasion; rather during some pause when body and mind both are still.
The soul does not always recognise itself as a guest seated within this frame; sometimes it appears to escape and look at the human life it has led, as if from without. It seems to become absorbed into the august stream of being; to see that fragment itself, without self-love, and as the great all of mankind would regard it if laid open to them.