“Those are comforting words,” said the boy’s father, who couldn’t understand them. “Keep it vague,” murmured the boy softly. “It is to the immoderate use of gymnastics,” said the physician, “that I ascribe your son’s melancholy. Wherefore, let him drink of a syrup of black hellebore, confected with the boiled seeds of anise, endive, mallow, fermitory, diacatholicon, hierologodium----” “Half-time----change ends,” said the boy under his breath. “Cassia and sweet almonds,” continued the physician. “And in the meantime he may drink of a broth of an exenterated chicken.” He had heard the youth’s last remark. “And,” he added severely, “let him beware of intempestive laughter.” So the physician went away. “What did he say?” asked the mother of the youth. “Well,” said the father, “he said that the boy had been growing too fast, at least he implied that, and he prescribed hierolo----French for chicken broth, you know.” But while the doctor’s prescription was being prepared, the boy went off to the cliffs; and he stretched himself at full length on the thyme, and went to sleep, and dreamed the old sweet dream, and the sun drew near to its setting, and in his pleasant sleep the boy died. Never had there been a happier and more desirable death. And under the burning sun a cloud was stretched like a cloth of gold. And the two highly respectable Athenians came out to look at it. “If I were to paint that exactly as it is,” said the first, “every one would say that my picture was intensely unnatural.” “Great Zeus!” ejaculated the second, for the first had made the remark nearly every night for rather more than sixteen years, and still thought there was a certain insight about it. In the golden heart of the cloud were together the soul of a youth and the soul of a young girl, two souls that had done their work and were resting. He sat in careless happiness looking down at her: for she was stretched at his feet, making a daisy-chain with the souls of the daisies that were to bloom next year. And ever she would look up from her work into his eyes; and the eyes of the two were strangely alike, and soft and bright. Into the cloud came the Manager. He was in a terrible hurry; for there had been great doings in Sicily, and an army had been cut to pieces, and consequently there was a press of business. “I’ve called to take your numbers,” he said. They both gave the same number.