He had passed from the golden quiet of his home into the midst of a large public school, into a busier, noisier world, where the real and the ideal no longer melted into a single dreamy haze; and when he looked back across the narrow stream of time――those few intervening weeks!――he could not but marvel at its depth. His former life had fallen from him like the sinking of a picture in the fire, and he knew that it would never come again. It was over!... finished!... done with!... How strange!... Yet when he closed his eyes it unrolled itself like a broad scroll, clear in every detail.... Then, when the voice of water, and the whisper of the wind in the trees and in the grass had been for him almost as the sound of human voices, and the broad open sky and sea as the sight of human faces――then, when such things had seemed to have the power to speak to him directly, to speak from their own soul to his――when Pan and his followers had been in every thicket by the way! Ah! gazing back upon it all from his present position, he found time to wonder――to wonder gravely, doubtfully――if that clear, pure atmosphere would ever again droop its wings above him, if things would ever be again, even for a little, as before. Those long, peaceful summer days, and cool, lingering evenings, when he had sat upon the steps beside his father, watching him smoke his pipe, and chattering to him of the different ideas and plans that danced, or lingered in his mind, while the trees seemed to rest so softly in the quiet air, so softly against the sky!... A sudden wild longing for it all, for all his old life, arose within him, and in a passion of homesickness he flung himself down in the swaying, sapless grass, and seemed to hear the moaning of a sea that was breaking, miles and miles away, upon a curved rocky shore, to hear the harsh screams of the sea-gulls as they flew restlessly over the grey bare waste of water, and dipped to the tumbling waves. All at once he was aroused by a foot-fall, a rustle in the grass, and still half-blinded by his dream, turned to face the intruder. ‘What is the matter? Can I help you at all?’ The words were very gently spoken, and came to Graham with a curious familiarity and charm. But instead of answering he sat quite still, gazing fixedly at the stranger, his colour gradually deepening. Fascinated, spell-bound, his lips parted, his eyes opened wide, he hardly dared to move lest the vision should vanish. For some moments indeed he scarce drew his breath; for some moments it seemed as though his whole vital force were concentrated into one long steadfast gaze.