The Warden appeared to force himself away from his own thoughts. With his hands still grasping the back of his chair, he raised his head and stood upright. The tick of the clock fell upon his ear; a monotonous and mechanical sound—indifferent to human life and yet weighted with importance to human life; marking the moments as they passed; moments never to be recalled; steps that are leading irretrievably the human race to their far-off destiny.
As the Warden's eyes watched the hands of the clock, they pointed to five minutes to eleven. A thought came to him.
"All the bells are silent now," he said, "except in the safe daylight."
May looked up at him.
"Even 'Tom' is silent. The Clusius is not tolled now."
He got up and walked along the room to the open window. There he held the curtain well aside and looked back at her. Why it was, May did not know, but it seemed imperative to her to come to him. She put her work aside and came through into the broad embrasure of the bay. Then he let the curtain fall and they stood together in the darkness. The Warden pushed out the latticed frame wider into the dark night. The air was scarcely stirring, it came in warm and damp against their faces.
The quadrangle below them was dimly visible. Eastwards the sky was heavy with a great blank pale space stretching over the battlemented roof and full of the light of a moon that had just risen, but overhead a heavy cloud slowly moved westwards.
They both leaned out and breathed the night air.
"It will rain in a moment," said the Warden.
"In the old days," he said, "there would have been sounds coming from these windows. There would have been men coming light-heartedly from these staircases and crossing to one another. Now all is under military rule: the poor remnant left of undergraduate life—poor mentally and physically—this poor remnant counts for nothing. All that is best has gone, gone voluntarily, eagerly, and the men who fill their places are training for the Great Sacrifice. It's the most glorious and the most terrible thing imaginable!"