‘I cannot be otherwise when I have left the town with you,’ he said. And at this I took his arm, for it was always less painful to myself when I walked close to him. We began to talk of our dreams. Circumstances had bound him to a profession that chafed his very core; but Nature had given him aspirations, and miraged him a future as great (if as worthless) as my own. How daring I grew! Farther and farther I had ventured down the heretical abyss. Gabriel’s face gleamed with amazement: he drank it all in greedily. Was it not curious that I, who knew how fast the end was nearing, should have dared to relax my hold upon those snatches of hope which are as straws to the drowning man? After a time I turned the discussion--if you may call a monologue discussion--to my favourite theme, which is death. I had grown so morbid that I could pile horror upon horror. I gloated on the orthodox eternity: I drew brave pictures of my childhood’s Satan in his environment of fire and gloom. But after the sunset rain came down in torrents. In five minutes we were wet to the skin. My clothes were old, my shoes let water; I had no umbrella, but walked under Gabriel’s. Just before twilight the path left the heath, and descended abruptly to the grass-grown coach-road that runs along the side of the hill they call the Silver Patines. Evening fell. The rain hissed on the heather, and the wind, catching the few gnarled thorns, drew from them a dull, sonorous cry. The river, somewhat in flood, rushed over jagged stones; a few moorland sheep were sheltering under the rocks that lined his banks. Owls, so unfamiliar with man that they rattled their wings well-nigh in our faces, went whirring through the air. They started a train of abstract reasoning in me as to the doctrine of transmigration. ‘Ah, Pythagoras’s metempsychosis!’ I said to myself. I am certain that my tongue was silent; yet Gabriel smiled. I was slightly hurt, and, drawing my arm away, walked to the other side of the road, refusing to shelter beneath the umbrella. Soon came the knowledge that his smile contained no touch of contempt, but was only a glad movement for that he knew himself in such sympathy with me as to apprehend my unvoiced fancy. I hastened to his side, and begged him to forgive. But the charm was broken for a time. My thoughts had withered, my words were grown unpregnant. So his happiness fled, there came a sequence of those drossy moments when silence is loathsome, yet must be. We felt them keenly. My head grew hot with grief: I it was who had snapped the golden cord. We had not walked much further before Gabriel stopped and leaned his cheek on the wet stones of the wall. ‘I wish that I were dead,’ he murmured. ‘I am tired.’ ‘Then shall we go back?’ I said. ‘Perhaps it would be best. We are both wet through: the inn may be uncomfortable--the rooms damp.’ He turned and gave me his hand. ‘Go back?’ he gasped: ‘go back? Why--I wish--that I might pass--all my life thus!’