But that procession of low-floating vapours proved long in passing. More than once a break came in it, making the young man suppose that the whole of them was gone by. And then again, out of the south, now one alone, now in close ranged companies, strangely shaped, as though draped in dragging shrouds, that interminable procession crossed the vault of the sky. A terror of incalculable number, of unthinkable multitude, began to lay hold on him, as still they came, and came. Was it conceivable that each human life had this almost appalling vista of human lives behind it, of which it was the outcome and result, and in which it had, consciously or unconsciously, taken part? There was a certain splendour in the thought, though it left but little room for personal vanity. Yet even while watching, and pondering of all this, the personal note remained--for he pondered also, not without profound discouragement, of his great adventure which just now appeared so signally to have failed. At the half hours and hours the striking clocks warned him that the night was far spent, but still that endless and mystic procession passed before his watching eyes. As once before, in this same room, his individuality seemed to sink away from him, while a horrible sense of his own nullity and nothingness prevailed. But at last, at last, when the first chill grey of the dawn began just perceptibly to lighten the horizon behind the lime grove, the last of these trailing vapours arose, passed over and disappeared. The moon declined towards her setting, yet, though she hung low, the whole field of heaven was at length her own.
Then Laurence rose, and went away across the quiet park and up the deep, tree-shadowed lane to the churchyard, on the hillside across the valley, sheltered by the bank of high-lying woods. The grass was long, starred with tall-growing buttercups, blue speedwell, and ox-eye daisies, heavy and hanging with wet. Only the plot beneath the grey wall of the little chancel was neatly mown, while, on the near side of it, conspicuous from the smooth surface of the turf rising immediately surrounding it, was a new-made grave. The sods covering it were kept in place by a cage of osier rods. Some one--and Laurence found it in his heart to bless that unknown ministrant--had laid a spray of pink wild-rose upon the head of the grave, twisted into a little crown, at once of blossom and of thorns.