It was as if I were beside an invalid who did not--must not--know his condition; as if I were pledged not to notice anything.

In the open the change struck home as a hammer strikes; in the pitiless searching of the unrestrained light, his grayness, his tremulousness, his aloofness from the things about him, came home to me like a pang.
"You look a bit fagged," I said, "perhaps we ought not to talk about work." His thoughts seemed to come back from a great distance, oh, from an infinite distance beyond the horizon, the soft hills of that fat country.

"You want rest," I added.
"I--oh, no," he answered, "I can't have it ...

till the end of the session.

I'm used to it too." He began talking briskly about the "_Cromwell_;" proofs had emerged from the infinite and wanted attention.