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the lane, and across the links. Itwanted three hours yet until sunset. He joked with the boys playing stump cricket on the school field. He skimmed stones. He thought of Rachel and tears started to his eyes. Then he sang to comfort himself. ‘Oh, I’m certainly mad,’ he said, ‘and what in the world has happened to my luck?’
    At lasthe came to the stones. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I shall find my soul in this heap and I shall crack it into a hundred pieces with this hammer’ – he had picked up the hammer in the coal shed as he came out.
    Then he began looking for his soul. Now, one may recognize the soul of another man or woman, but one can never recognize one’s own. Richard could not find his. But by chance he came upon Rachel’s souland recognized it (a slim green stone with glints of quartz in it) because she was estranged from him at the time. Against it lay another stone, an ugly misshapen flint of a mottled brown. He swore: ‘I’ll destroy this. It must be the soul of Charles.’
    He kissed the soul of Rachel; it was like kissing her lips. Then he took the soul of Charles and poised his hammer. ‘I’ll knock you into fiftyfragments!’
    He paused. Richard had scruples. He knew that Rachel loved Charles better than himself, and he was bound to respect the compact. A third stone (his own, it must be) was lying the other side of Charles’s stone; it was of smooth grey granite, about the size of a cricket ball. He said to himself: ‘I will break my own soul in pieces and that will be the end of me.’ The world grew black,his eyes ceased to focus, and he all but fainted. But he recovered himself, and with a great cry brought down the coal hammer crack, and crack again, on the grey stone.
    It split in four pieces, exuding a smell like gunpowder: and when Richard found that he was still alive and whole, he began to laugh and laugh. Oh, he was mad, quite mad! He flung the hammer away, lay down exhausted, and fellasleep.
    He awoke as the sun was just setting. He went home in confusion, thinking: ‘This is a very bad dream and Rachel will help me out of it.’
    When he came to the edge of the town he found a group of men talking excitedly under a lamppost. One said: ‘About eight o’clock it happened, didn’t it?’ The other said: ‘Yes.’ A third said: ‘Ay, mad as a hatter. “Touch me,” he says, “and I’ll shout.I’ll shout you into a fit, the whole blasted police force of you. I’ll shout you mad.” And the inspector says: “Now, Crossley, put your hands up, we’ve got you cornered at last.” “One last chance,” says he. “Go and leave me or I’ll shout you stiff and dead.”’
    Richard had stopped to listen. ‘And what happened to Crossley then?’ he said. ‘And what did the woman say?’
    ‘“For Christ’s sake,” shesaid to the inspector, “go away or he’ll kill you.”’
    ‘And did he shout?’
    ‘He didn’t shout. He screwed up his face for a moment and drew in hisbreath. A’mighty, I’ve never seen such a ghastly looking face in my life. I had to take three or four brandies afterwards. And the inspector he drops the revolver and it goes off; but nobody hit. Then suddenly a change comes over this man Crossley. Heclaps his hands to his side and again to his heart, and his face goes smooth and dead again. Then he begins to laugh and dance and cut capers. And the woman stares and can’t believe her eyes and the police lead him off. If he was mad before, he was just harmless dotty now; and they had no trouble with him. He’s been taken off in the ambulance to the Royal West County Asylum.’
    So Richard wenthome to Rachel and told her everything and she told him everything, though there was not much to tell. She had not fallen in love with Charles, she said; she was only teasing Richard and she had never said anything or heard Charles say anything in the least like what he told her; it was part of his dream. She loved him always and only him, for all his faults;