“I am not going,” he said to himself, and for a while he was resolute and would not move; yet presently he rose and went back to the cottage.
The door was half open now.
He pushed wide the garden gate and entered; he was acutely conscious of the scent of the simple flowers and the tolling of the bell.
Without knocking he entered.
Two men were in the narrow passage carrying before them a coffin.
Philip Wharton found himself face to face with it; it was held upright, and the name-plate was near his eyes. He read, “Aged nineteen.”
He heard a woman sobbing in the room into which the coffin was being taken, and he peered through the crack of the door.
On a humble bed lay the wasted form of a young girl from which the soul had recently departed.
Philip Wharton passed out of the house, out of the garden, and down the meadow.
“I am sorry,” he said; he had never sincerely spoken those words before.