This fact alone forbade further attention, though during the time
he stayed he remained vaguely conscious of his neighbour, a middle-
aged man apparently, in mourning, whose bowed back, among the
clustered monuments and mortuary yews, was constantly presented.
Marcher's theory that these were elements in contact with which he
himself revived, had suffered, on this occasion, it may be granted,
a marked, an excessive check. The autumn day was dire for him as
none had recently been, and he rested with a heaviness he had not
yet known on the low stone table that bore May Bartram's name. He
rested without power to move, as if some spring in him, some spell
vouchsafed, had suddenly been broken for ever. If he could have
done that moment as he wanted he would simply have stretched
himself on the slab that was ready to take him, treating it as a
place prepared to receive his last sleep. What in all the wide
world had he now to keep awake for? He stared before him with the
question, and it was then that, as one of the cemetery walks passed
near him, he caught the shock of the face.
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