He did not waver. He did not repine. He made no reproach, even in his own thoughts. He had only lost all the hope out of his life and all the pride of it.
But men lose these and live on; women also.
He had built up his little kingdom out of atoms, little by little; atoms of time, of patience, of self-denial, of hoarded coins, of snatched moments;—built it up little by little, at cost of bodily labour and of bodily pain, as the pyramids were built brick by brick by the toil and the torment of unnoticed lives.
It was only a poor little nook of land, but it had been like an empire won to him.
With his foot on its soil he had felt rich.
And now it was gone—gone like a handful of thistle-down lost on the winds, like a spider's web broken in a shower of rain. Gone: never to be his own again. Never.
He sat and watched the brook run on, the pied birds come to drink, the throstle stir on the olive, the cloud shadows steal over the brown, bare fields.
The red flush of sunrise faded. Smoke rose from the distant roofs. Men came out on the lands to work. Bells rang. The day began.
He got up slowly and went away; looking backwards, looking backwards, always.