"You have been out a long time, nearly three hours," he said. "I think you ought to come in now."
He sighed again. "All right," he said slowly. But he did not rise, and Mary did not hurry him. She stood looking down at him, while his slack lips fidgeted and his pale eyes flitted here and there over the ancient graves.
"Why did you come here to this place?" she asked him presently. Her voice was very low.
He hesitated. "It's where I ought to be," he said heavily. "Only I didn't have no luck." One hand went out uncertainly and he pointed to the graves. "Them chaps is past bothering," he said. "There's no gettin' at them."
He shook his head—it was as though he shivered—and relapsed into silence again.
"You shouldn't think about things like that," Mary said.
He looked up at her almost shrewdly. "Think!" he repeated. "I got no need to think. I know."
"Know—what?"
"Ah!" he said, and gat brooding. "I'm alive, I am," he said, at last; "but I been better off once. There's no way of tellin' it, 'cos it don't' fit into words. Words wasn't meant to show such things. But I wasn't just a limpin', squintin' little welsher; I was something that could feel the meaning of things and the reason for them, just like you can feel 'eat and cold. Could feel and know things such as nobody can't feel or know till 'e's done with this rotten bustle of livin' and doin' things. That's what I know, Miss; that's what I found out when I died in that there 'orspital."
Mary stared at him; a brief vivacity was in his face as he spoke, a tone of certainty in his voice.