No, I answered to myself, it was no dream. I had left her. . . . What did it mean? I had left her. I had left her. I had left her. I had left her. I had left her.—Ay; I knew now! That woman was the woman of my heart and soul. My life had been lived for her since the day I had first dreamt of the dear girl-comrade. I had left her. The cross-road of my heart's life and soul's was reached.—I had left her!
I stopped; then went on again.
'The malice of fate is infinite,' I said, 'It is too late!'
And everywhere was dim.
III
Everywhere was dim. It seemed as if all the rigging of my soul's bark had turned to calcined semblances that fell, as calcined semblances fall, making no noise. And then it seemed as if some semblance of myself wandered to and fro, and round about, in this strange dim place, and thought and thought, trying to regain its hue and presence of health, and could not. Snatches of the music of that lifeful past came to me and grew into deeper colour, bringing hope of permanency—only to be lost again in this strange dim place of noiseless falling calcined semblances.
At last the great dim mass grew pale and receded: my own figure stood darker in the foreground. I began to think. I had vaguely felt in the earlier part of my walk that my body was a little weary: perhaps it was but the action of the mind on it; for, now that the mind was in almost healthy activity again, the body was in sympathy with it. I went on with a springy step, and began whistling, turning my thought into the parallel though less distinct expression of music.
And I had some enjoyment in the fine clear night, its air and its star-sown heaven. So at last I found myself in Trafalgar Square, where bells had been ringing and the air filled with an aerial swinging merriment; and the clear-soaring moon up above, and here and there stars. And one particular star twinkling through a slanting downward bank of gauzed clouds. Then I
