He made an effort, and in a moment his hands dropped back on the grass again, hands red, wet, and feeble. The immense noise of the cannonading became a hum in his ears and then was silent. A little white cloud in the sky seemed to spread over the blue and turn gray. He closed his eyes. It would be like this, after all. It had always seemed a difficulty, a knotted problem that speculation could not untie. It did not seem like a knot or a difficulty now, but more like a solution, a smoothing, a quiet explanation. One thought life so difficult and death the hardest knot in its logic, but if one found death to be the answer instead of the worst difficulty, looked upon in that way it might even seem to be a simple answer. A gradual oblivion--not exactly that--a blending of noises into chords and glassy harmonies--it was more like that. The noises of the field were all gone, and there was no more earth or sky, no men visible running past with rifles, no roar, echo, concussion, nor moan of the flying missiles. But the silent vacancy was filling again with other forms and sounds, whispering voices, faces that leaned and smiled, others that threatened, some that turned from him and cried out and fled. One of those that fled was the Father Superior. One of those that leaned and smiled was Helen. But there did not appear any reason for either, unless the Father Superior might be frightened at seeing what a lost soul looked like face to face. Helen wore a broad, white collar. Afterwards she came again with a blue ribbon around her neck, dressed in white, looking fragile, and said, "I'll fight for you; I don't care who they are." Who were "they?" Most of the forms were strangers, but Fritz Moselle sat at a cloudy organ that pealed with thunder and shot lightning from the top of its precipice of pipes. And he played till the yellow stars jumped down and sang anthems, and Mavering came stalking after them, saying. "They are an interesting and peculiar people on that secular comet up there, and the best liars I know; in the pursuit of which interest. O Fritz, I'm going to pick up my kit and go back." Mrs. Mavering would not go, and Madonna said, "Be kind to Gard," to the _bonus Deus_, who seemed puzzled. Helen came and sobbed over him and stretched out her hands. He caught at them, missed, and fell several years through spaces and spaces. Innumerable faces were plastered against the sides of the pit, innumerable lips cried to him, but he thought, "They all have issues of their own." A great voice, heavy, stolid, and cold, called, "Eternity around, divinity within," but no one really agreed with it. A gust of wind drove down the pit and blew him like a dried leaf, while he cried out helplessly, and fled another year before the wind, till a slim hand gripped his wrist and stopped him. The grip was sinewy. The gusts and the stolid voice went driving past them down the pit. It was useless to count the faces plastered against the sides.