He sat with his shoulder towards the Vicar, so that those perplexed eyes could not be seen.

He must have been thinking very intently--at any rate he was sitting very still ...
He never turned round.

He never knew that the Vicar, who had played so large a part in shaping his life, looked then at him for the very last of innumerable times--did not know even that he was there.

(So it is so many partings happen.) The Vicar was struck at the time by the fact that, after all, no one on earth had the slightest idea of what this great monster thought about when he saw fit to rest from his labours.
But he was too indolent to follow up that new theme that day; he fell back from its suggestion into his older grooves of thought.
"_Aere-perennius,"_ he whispered, walking slowly homeward by a path that no longer ran straight athwart the turf after its former fashion, but wound circuitously to avoid new sprung tussocks of giant grass.

"No! nothing is changed.