Anguish wrung his soul until his strength went from him and youth and hope turned to gall and bitterness in his heart . He never afterwards could tell how he lived through the following Sunday or how he taught school as usual on Monday . He found out how much a man may suffer and yet go on living and working . His body seemed to him an automaton that moved and spoke mechanically , while his tortured spirit , pent-up within , endured pain that left its impress on him for ever . Out of that fiery furnace of agony Eric Marshall was to go forth a man who had put boyhood behind him for ever and looked out on life with eyes that saw into it and beyond . On Tuesday afternoon there was a funeral in the district and , according to custom , the school was closed . Eric went again to the old orchard . He had no expectation of seeing Kilmeny there , for he thought she would avoid the spot lest she might meet him . But he could not keep away from it , although the thought of it was an added torment , and he vibrated between a wild wish that he might never see it again , and a sick wonder how he could possibly go away and leave it -- that strange old orchard where he had met and wooed his sweetheart , watching her develop and blossom under his eyes , like some rare flower , until in the space of three short months she had passed from exquisite childhood into still more exquisite womanhood . As he crossed the pasture field before the spruce wood he came upon Neil Gordon , building a longer fence . Neil did not look up as Eric passed , but sullenly went on driving poles . Before this Eric had pitied Neil ; now he was conscious of feeling sympathy with him . Had Neil suffered as he was suffering ? Eric had entered into a new fellowship whereof the passport was pain . The orchard was very silent and dreamy in the thick , deep tinted sunshine of the September afternoon , a sunshine which seemed to possess the power of extracting the very essence of all the odours which summer has stored up in wood and field . There were few flowers now ; most of the lilies , which had queened it so bravely along the central path a few days before , were withered . The grass had become ragged and sere and unkempt . But in the corners the torches of the goldenrod were kindling and a few misty purple asters nodded here and there . The orchard kept its own strange attractiveness , as some women with youth long passed still preserve an atmosphere of remembered beauty and innate , indestructible charm . Eric walked drearily and carelessly about it , and finally sat down on a half fallen fence panel in the shadow of the overhanging spruce boughs .
There he gave himself up to a reverie , poignant and bitter sweet , in which he lived over again everything that had passed in the orchard since his first meeting there with XXXXX .
Gordon Kilmeny Marshall Neil afternoon attractiveness days goldenrod kindling left