XXXII
Dale's meditations had carried him backward and forward through the
past years, and left him against the blank wall of the present.
He was sitting on the fallen beech tree in the woodland glade. The sun
had set, and the night promised to be darker than recent nights; when
he looked at the grand gold watch given to him by his admirers, he
could only just see its hands. Nearly nine o'clock. He had been here a
long while. It was hours and hours since Norah went away. He sighed
wearily, got up, and walked back to his empty home.
Quite empty--that was the impression it made upon his mind both
to-night and all next day. He looked at it in the bright morning
sunshine, across the meadows, while the scythes laid down the first
long swathes of fragrant grass, and it seemed merely the shell of a
house. He looked at it in the midday glare, as he came up the field to
his dinner, and it seemed cold and black and cheerless. He looked at
it in the softer, kinder light of late afternoon, and it seemed to him
tragically sad--a monument of woe rather than a house, a fantastic
tomb built in the shape of a house in order to symbolize the homely
joy that had perished on this spot.
Yet smoke was rising from its chimneys, sound issuing from its
windows.
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