Explore "The Return" by Walter de la Mare on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had passed languidly away. Dr. Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge seemed to lurk. Even Mrs. Lawford had appeared to share her husband's reticence. But Dr. Simon had happened on other cases in his experience where tact was required rather than skill, and time than medicine.
The voices and footsteps, even the frou-frou of worshippers going to church, the voices and footsteps of worshippers returning from church, had floated up to the patient's open window. Sunlight had drawn across his room in one pale beam, and vanished. A few callers had called. Hothouse flowers, waxen and pale, had been left with messages of sympathy. Even Dr. Critchett had respectfully and discreetly made inquiries on his way home from chapel.