He was to live to believe this, I say,
though he was not to live, I may not less definitely mention, to do
much else. We allow him at any rate the benefit of the conviction,
struggling up for him at the end, that, whatever might have
happened or not happened, he would have come round of himself to
the light. The incident of an autumn day had put the match to the
train laid from of old by his misery. With the light before him he
knew that even of late his ache had only been smothered. It was
strangely drugged, but it throbbed; at the touch it began to bleed.
And the touch, in the event, was the face of a fellow-mortal. This
face, one grey afternoon when the leaves were thick in the alleys,
looked into Marcher's own, at the cemetery, with an expression like
the cut of a blade. He felt it, that is, so deep down that he
winced at the steady thrust. The person who so mutely assaulted
him was a figure he had noticed, on reaching his own goal, absorbed
by a grave a short distance away, a grave apparently fresh, so that
the emotion of the visitor would probably match it for frankness.
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