He felt it was a little too much to expect him to see the change actually being made, and the garments of sacrifice put on.

(It struck him with an unpleasant shock, considering the form of his previous metaphor, that he should have taken Frank into the old sacristy.) He sat down on the low wall, built to hold the churchyard from slipping altogether down the hill-side, and looked out over the little town below.
The sky was more noticeable here; one was more conscious of the enormous silent vault, crowded with the steady stars, cool and aloof; and, beneath, of the feverish little town with sparks of red light dotted here and there, where men wrangled and planned and bargained, and carried on the little affairs of their little life with such astonishing zest.

Jack was far from philosophical as a rule, but it is a fact that meditations of this nature did engross him for a minute or two while he sat and waited for Frank, and heard the low voices talking in the lane outside.

It even occurred to him for an instant that it was just possible that what Frank had said in the smoking-room before dinner was true, and that Something really did have him in hand, and really, did intend a definite plan and result to emerge from this deplorable and quixotic nonsense.

(I suppose the contrast of stars and human lights may have helped to suggest this sort of thing to him.) Then he gave himself up again to dismal considerations of a more particular kind.
* * * * * He heard Frank come out, and turned to see him in the dim light, bag in hand, dressed again as he had been three days ago.