“Or shed one tear–one tear for another? One tear to heal all the wickedness you have committed–all the grief you have caused?”
“Never!” he answered. “Never!”
“Is there no memory you can recall that would soften you to tears now?”
He answered “None.”
Her hand slackened on his arm and was withdrawn; in the confusion of the lifting shadows and the spreading milky whiteness of the new day he lost her.
He was alone in the garden. No, not a garden; it was soon light enough to see, and he then noticed that he was walking in an English field in early spring-time.
Before him a meadow sloped to a fence that enclosed a little wood; bluebells, daffodils, and primroses grew under the branches of the trees; the meadow was starred all over with buttercups and daisies.
To one side of the fence was a small thatched cottage behind which the sun was rising, and where the distance merged into the early blue vapour the sharp spire of a church rose.
A slight, very slight, feeling of apprehension came over Philip Wharton.
“I do not wish to come back here,” he said. “This has all been a dream, and I will wake up now.”