For his pain was there, it never left him. Only from having been a furious beast, flying at his throat, it had become merely a constant and wearisome companion, who would leave him no peace even in his loneliness—a persistent aching—a weary, weary longing. Yes, that was it: a weary, weary longing—a longing for the little duties that used to need fitting in to his rougher man’s work, the care of a tender little body, the care of a sunny little soul, the daily anxieties and the hourly joys, the rare punishments, the frequent rewards, the mischief, and the noise and the laughter—the endless vitality of the day and the deep and tender rest of even. Where were they all? To use her own little phrase—the phrase that came back to him at every turn—“all gone—all gone!” The words echoed through his brain most days, but, when the bells of which the parish was so proud pealed on Sundays, and he closed his door and sat by his lonely hearth, instead of leading her forth to church in her best as he had been wont to do—then they fairly maddened him. For the first chime of seven bells would seem to ring out other words that were almost as often in his mind; those last appealing words of his poor erring wife, that he so little understood at the time: “It ain’t ’er fault no ways, Tom!” and then the last short bell would say over and over again: “All gone, all gone!” until he could have sworn at it to bid it stop. But it never stopped; it went on in his head all the time. And the long summer was at an end, and was fading into the sad autumn, and after autumn would come the long winter. He used to sit upon the wooden bench outside the door into his garden and smoke his pipe when his work was done, and watch the autumn come. He would have no woman about the house now; he would do everything for himself—so that he was alone,—always alone, for never a neighbour was admitted even if one dared to intrude,—and for the most part they all let him be. The hollyhocks still stood tall and quiet, with their black and crimson tufts against the grey stone of his outer wall, and the sunflowers bowed heavy heads to the setting sun where the white lilies had bloomed against its rising one day in summer. He sat there every evening and remembered it, but one evening in particular he wished the autumn flowers away more regretfully than usual, and wondered what he would do if the June lilies were blooming there once more, and he had that to fight and that to do again which he had fought and had done that day. He always thanked his God who had numbed his arm and his senses—thanked Him whenever the memory of that one moment forced itself upon him: the only moment of all the bad moments when his hate had taken strange shape against _her_: the awful moment when her innocent face upon the pillow had been the face of the false comrade who had robbed him, and when the dawn had swum red in his sight.