The swift December dusk had e tumbling ishly after its dull day and, as he stared through the dull square of the window of the schoolroom, he felt his belly crave for its food. He hoped there would be stew for diurnips and carrots and bruised potatoes and fat mutton pieces to be ladled out in thick peppered flour-fattened sauce. Stuff it into you, his belly selled him.
It would be a gloomy secret night. After early nightfall the yellos would light up, here and there, the squalid quarter of the brothels. He would follow a devious course up and dowreets, cirg always nearer and nearer in a tremor of fear and joy, until his feet led him suddenly round a dark er. The whores would be just ing out of their houses making ready for the night, yawning lazily after their sleep aling the hairpins in their clusters of hair. He would pass by them calmly waiting for a sudden movement of his own will or a sudden call to his sin-loving soul from their soft perfumed flesh. Yet as he prowled i of that call, his senses, stultified only by his desire, would note keenly all that wounded or shamed them; his eyes, a ring of porter froth on a clothless table or a photograph of two soldiers standing to attentiaudy playbill; his ears, the drawling jargon of greeting:
-- Hello, Bertie, any good in your mind?
-- Is that you, pigeon?
-- en. Fresh Nelly is waiting on you.
-- Good night, husband! ing in to have a short time?
The equation on the page of his scribbler began to spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacocks; and, when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together again. The indices appearing and disappearing were eyes opening and closing; the eyes opening and closing were stars being born and being quehe vast cycle of starry life bore his weary mind outward to its verge and inward to its tre, a distant music apanying him outward and inward. What music? The music came nearer and he recalled the words, the words of Shelleys fragment upon the moon wandering panionless, pale for weariness. The stars began to crumble and a cloud of fiardust fell through space.
The dull light fell more faintly upon the page whereon another equation began to unfold itself slowly and to spread abroad its widening tail. It was his own soul going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the bale-fire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself, fading slowly, queng its own lights and fires. They were quenched: and the cold darkness filled chaos.
A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. At his first violent sin he had felt a wave of vitality pass out of him and had feared to find his body or his soul maimed by the excess. Ihe vital wave had carried him on its bosom out of himself and back agai receded: and no part of body or soul had been maimed but a dark peace had beeablished betweehe chaos in which his ardour extinguished itself was a cold indifferent knowledge of himself. He had sinned mortally not o many times and he khat, while he stood in danger of eternal damnation for the first sin alone, by every succeeding sin he multiplied his guilt and his punishment. His days and works and thoughts could make no ato for him, the fountains of sanctifying grace having ceased to refresh his soul. At most, by an alms given to a beggar whose blessing he fled from, he might hope wearily to win for himself some measure of actual grace. Devotion