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Rh they saw him scramble up the distant knoll to the deserted house.

Brushing through the rank chick weed that choked the path. Harden, still in a frenzy of haste, reached the door and thrust the key somehow into the lock. Then, as for the first time in his life he tried to unlock the door from without, it came over him suddenly that there was no use in hurrying so. Sick with despair, he stopped, and looked round him in a hateful calmness. He saw the windows, with the white shades pulled down, looking at him like blank eyes; saw the caraway weeds, the yarrow, the everlasting, and the red flowers of the tall London Pride, growing high and wild along the front of the gray shingles; felt the heat of noon beat down on the millstone doorstep; heard in the stillness the wiry hum of innumerable flies; and all was flat, and dead, and meaningless.

At last he opened the door. With bared head, slowly and quietly, as if coming into some dread presence, he entered, closed the door gently, and stood looking about him. The kitchen, with the white-shaded windows