There was nothing in the sky in the least like a shell.

There, in the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been accomplished.

There was no trace of shell, and there was stretched over fully half the sky an even cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets.

The sky had grown blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

"No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it.