After a pause, of thought almost as much as of words, I said:
'I ask You, God, if You are, to have pity on me if I am blindly wandering, and to lead me to know You some day before I die. I don't know how I am going, but I know where I desire to go: and yet I don't know more than that it is somewhere.' Then the feeling of light and shadow, dream and reality, an eclipsed sun and moon, came to me so strongly that I got up again, slowly, with the intention of saying no more prayers that night. The things around me were all in a sort of noise above my ears. I went and turned out the gas; and then slowly undressed, in the dark save for the light that came from a gas-lamp in the street, through the far window.
I pulled down the upper-clothes; got into bed; sank into enclosing coolness, and very soon sleep.
iii
When I first woke up, I thought I was back in my room at Glastonbury: then recalled, but slowly, all that had happened the day before.—That next-day awakening was a dreary thing: everything that I had done seemed so purposeless! It would be better to marry a red-cheeked woman, with untidy gold hair and a brown homely dress, and smoke a pipe in the sun all day while she brushed out the house. The picture I conjured up made me laugh aloud. I leaped out of bed. The sun was shining.
I went to the other far window: pulled down the upper part, and looked out. The air clear and rather sharp, but not cold: as something almost corporal, to my inhaling lungs. I had no watch. It was about half-past seven or eight, I thought. A man came with sounding steps down the street and passed invisibly below me. I pulled up the window again; stripped, and prepared to wash. Such a little jug and such a little basin! And no sponge!—What was I to do without a sponge?
I made the best of it: dried myself on the one flabby towel, and began to dress. Dressed quickly, and then taking up my hat, went slowly downstairs.
