It was perfectly still, too--the wind had dropped, and the only sound as the two walked down the park was the low talking of the stream over the stones beyond the belt of trees fifty yards away from the road.
Jack was sick at heart; but even so, he tells me, he was conscious that Frank's silence was of a peculiar sort.

He felt somehow as if his friend were setting out to some great sacrifice in which he was to suffer, and was only partly conscious of it--or, at least, so buoyed by some kind of exaltation or fanaticism as not to realize what he was doing.

(He reminded me of a certain kind of dream that most people have now and then, of accompanying some friend to death: the friend goes forward, silent and exultant, and we cannot explain nor hold him back.
"That was the sort of feeling," said Jack lamely.) * * * * * Jack had the grim satisfaction of carrying the bag in which, so to speak, the knife and fillet were hidden.

He changed his mood half a dozen times even in that quarter of an hour's walk through the town.

Now the thing seemed horrible, like a nightmare; now absurdly preposterous; now rather beautiful; now perfectly ordinary and commonplace.