CHAPTER XXVII
STEPHEN'S PRIVATE LIFE
Mr. Stone and Thyme, going out, again passed the tall, white young man.
He had thrown away the hand-made cigarette, finding that it had not
enough saltpetre to make it draw, and was smoking one more suited to
the action of his lungs. He directed towards them the same lack-lustre,
jeering stare.
Unconscious, seemingly, of where he went, Mr. Stone walked with his eyes
fixed on space. His head jerked now and then, as a dried flower will
shiver in a draught.
Scared at these movements, Thyme took his arm. The touch of that soft
young arm squeezing his own brought speech back to Mr. Stone.
"In those places...." he said, "in those streets! ...I shall not see the
flowering of the aloe--I shall not see the living peace! 'As with dogs,
each couched over his proper bone, so men were living then!'" Thyme,
watching him askance, pressed still closer to his side, as though to try
and warm him back to every day.
'Oh!' went her guttered thoughts. 'I do wish grandfather would say
something one could understand. I wish he would lose that dreadful
stare.'
Mr. Stone spoke in answer to his granddaughter's thoughts.
"I have seen a vision of fraternity. A barren hillside in the sun, and
on it a man of stone talking to the wind. I have heard an owl hooting in
the daytime; a cuckoo singing in the night.
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