I did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less did I ask how I, with my murderous purpose, stood to them all. I write down that realization of disorder and suffocation here and now as though I had thought it, but indeed then I only felt it, felt it transitorily as I looked back, and then stood with the thing escaping from my mind. I should never see that country-side again. I came back to that. At any rate I wasn’t sorry. The chances were I should die in sweet air, under a clean sky. From distant Swathinglea came a little sound, the minute undulation of a remote crowd, and then rapidly three shots. That held me perplexed for a space. . . . Well, anyhow I was leaving it all! Thank God I was leaving it all! Then, as I turned to go on, I thought of my mother. It seemed an evil world in which to leave one’s mother. My thoughts focused upon her very vividly for a moment. Down there, under that afternoon light, she was going to and fro, unaware as yet that she had lost me, bent and poking about in the darkling underground kitchen, perhaps carrying a lamp into the scullery to trim, or sitting patiently, staring into the fire, waiting tea for me. A great pity for her, a great remorse at the blacker troubles that lowered over her innocent head, came to me. Why, after all, was I doing this thing? Why? I stopped again dead, with the hill crest rising between me and home. I had more than half a mind to return to her. Then I thought of the curate’s sovereigns. If he has missed them already, what should I return to? And, even if I returned, how could I put them back? And what of the night after I renounced my revenge? What of the time when young Verrall came back? And Nettie? No! The thing had to be done. But at least I might have kissed my mother before I came away, left her some message, reassured her at least for a little while. All night she would listen and wait for me. . . . . Should I send her a telegram from Two-Mile Stone? It was no good now; too late, too late. To do that would be to tell the course I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure, if pursuit there was to be. No. My mother must suffer! I went on grimly toward Two-Mile Stone, but now as if some greater will than mine directed my footsteps thither. I reached Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the last train for Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night. CHAPTER THE FIFTH THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS § 1 As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it carried me not only into a country where I had never been before, but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality of ordinary things, into the strange unprecedented night that was ruled by the giant meteor of the last days.