Everything around him was as it had been some three years before. The table was covered with cups and the floor with crumbs. Perhaps the mouse pulling at a crumb under the table was the same mouse as on that other evening. The only difference was the brooding daylight of summer and the ceaseless chirruping of the sparrows in the ivy outside. He had a confused sense of having lost his way. It was just the same feeling he had known as a child, when one dark night he had taken a wrong turning, and instead of arriving at his own house, found himself at a landmark he knew was miles from home. A moment earlier, however difficult his life, the issues were always definite; now suddenly had entered the obscurity of another’s interest. Before this it had not occurred to him that Mary Carton had any stronger feeling for him than warm friendship. He began again, speaking in the same mechanical way—“Miss Leland lives with her mother near us. She is very well educated and very well connected, though she has lived always among business people.” Miss Carton, with a great effort, had recovered her composure. “I congratulate you,” she said. “I hope you will be always happy. You came here on some business for your firm, I suppose? I believe they have some connection with the town still.” “I only came here to tell you I was going to be married.” “Do you not think it would have been better to have written?” she said, beginning to put away the children’s tea-things in a cupboard by the fireplace. “It would have been better,” he answered, drooping his head. Without a word, locking the door behind them, they went out. Without a word they walked the grey streets. Now and then a woman or a child curtseyed as they passed. Some wondered, perhaps, to see these old friends so silent. At the rectory they bade each other good-bye. “I hope you will be always happy,” she said. “I will pray for you and your wife. I am very busy with the children and old people, but I shall always find a moment to wish you well in. Good-bye now.” They parted; the gate in the wall closed behind her. He stayed for a few moments looking up at the tops of the trees and bushes showing over the wall, and at the house a little way beyond. He stood considering his problem—her life, his life. His, at any rate, would have incident and change; hers would be the narrow existence of a woman who, failing to fulfil the only abiding wish she has ever formed, seeks to lose herself in routine—mournfulest of things on this old planet.