They were simple enough, no doubt, so
simple that I could not remember them, only that he had reminded me
that Michael Malia, that was the mason's name, had known me since I
was a little boy; I do not know how he got it out; I should not have
been able to express the idea myself, but without choosing his words,
without being aware of them, speaking unconsciously, just as he
breathed, he had told me that if my heart were set on any particular
place I had only to tell Michael Malia and he would keep it for me;
there would be a convenient place for me just above my grandfather
when they had got the new shelf up; he had heard we were both writers.
That country boy took it out of me as perhaps no poet had ever done! I
shall never forget him as I saw him going away stolidly through the
green wood, his bag of lime on his back.
And sitting down in front of the tranquil lake I said, "In twenty or
thirty years I shall certainly join the others in that horrible vault;
nothing can save me," and again the present slipped away from me and
my mind became again clear as glass; the present is only subconscious;
were it not so we could not live. I have said all this before; again I
seemed to myself like a fly crawling up a pane of glass, falling back,
buzzing, and crawling again.
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