For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite connection with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for sleep; and, at the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of fear, it would be like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of disillusion mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive longing for perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt. Fearsome images filled his mind... the hole in the clay--closed; putrefaction; the linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the gas; his body was wet with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily. The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a loving pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed a less threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A vague belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of all, rose within him--there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs to cross, a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the gas.--Eliza was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber. XX HE made no comment when, in the morning, his mother made tentative piles of his clothing. He would see Eliza that afternoon, and then announce their decision. His mother attempted to fathom his feeling at the prospect of the journey, the separation from Ellerton; but, the memory of his father's cutting words still rankling in his mind, he evaded her questioning. “If you are going to be miserable out there,” she told him, enveloping him in the affection of her steady, grey gaze, “something else might be found. I can always help--” “You don't understand these things,” he interrupted her brusquely, annoyed by his father's prescience. They were sitting in her sewing room, a pile of his socks at her side. She wore her familiar, severe garb, the steelbowed spectacles directed upon the needle flashing steadily in her assured fingers. She was eternally laboring for her children, Anthony realized with a pang of affection. His earliest memories were charged with her unflagging care, the touch of her smooth and tireless hands, the defense of her energetic voice. He must tell her about his engagement, but not until he had seen Eliza again, when something definite would be agreed upon. It was immensely difficult for him to talk about the subject nearest his heart-words diminished and misrepresented it: he wanted to brood over it, secretly, for days. XXI LATER he dressed with scrupulous exactitude, and proceeded directly to Hydrangea House. The afternoon was sultry, the air full of the soothing drone of summer insects, the dust of the road rose in heavy puffs about his feet. He crossed the stream and fields, saturated with sunlight, and came to the pillared portico of his destination.