They have just told me that I cannot live beyond midnight. But this is no confession of guilt. Knowing that I was soon to see an unknown land, and that the friend I had won (the first and the last) loved me so dearly that he would be unhappy unless his hand were clasping mine--did I sin in my desire that he should go forth, and be waiting for me? A fortnight ago I met him in the street. His head was hanging, his gait dejected, he was talking to himself. I stood watching him. As he approached, long before he really saw me, a change came over him: his figure grew erect, his face sharpened, his lips closed. He smiled strangely as our eyes met, and I felt exultant in the knowledge that such spontaneous gladness should never degenerate. I took his hand, and held it so long that the townsfolk looked and laughed. ‘Gabriel,’ I said, ‘I have been dreaming of you again. I thought we had gone together to spend Sunday on the Naze of Blakelow.’ A warm flush of pleasure spread over his face. ‘Yes,’ I went on, ‘and you said in my dream that it was the last of the vignettes’ (he had a way of calling our short holidays ‘vignettes’), ‘and I replied that this was on a grander scale.’ He laughed, though I am sure he did not understand. ‘If only you _would_ go,’ he made answer, ‘I feel that I should be so much better for the mountain air. I am out of tune with all the world but you. I can start soon--in two hours, if you will.’ So we met later. I looked on his dark face, and my heart leaped out to him. I forgot the acrimony of living with those whose only feeling for me was one of relationship; forgot the Dead Sea apples of my past, and felt joyful beyond expression: often pressing my hand to my heart, where the toy I carried nestled in its scarlet sheath. Something in his face told me that he was sad. ‘You are not happy now?’ I said. ‘I am not,’ he replied. ‘I am envious of you. Your life is so free: you have no business affairs to drag you to earth. But I shall be happy soon; it is good to be with you.’ As for myself, I never was happier. My spirits rose quickly; from the far recesses of my brain I brought the wildest thoughts to lay before him. Flashes of inspiration that only showed in his presence (sparks of divine fire, perhaps) spun themselves into one glittering string for his sake. We were to sleep at the Eagle, a hostelry whose prosperity began dwindling with the decline of coaching. It lies eighteen miles from our town, midway between the hamlets Ashstraw and Glosboro. Neither of us had been there before; but the guide-book was explicit. The weather was dull; but it took no hold on me. We left the precincts of the town and reached the great moorland with its bridle-path. When the dense smoke of the furnaces had given place to fresh, heather-scented air, I essayed a question. ‘Are you still depressed?’ ‘No,’ he cried, with his brown eyes full of mirth. ‘Then you are perfectly happy?’ said I. (It was always gratifying to be assured of this.)