g looks. Now that we were here I certainly wished myself away,
though I would not have retreated, and for awhile I was glad of the
discomforts besetting me; my step was hearty as I led on, meditating upon
asking some one the direction to the Bench presently. We had to walk, and
it was nothing but traversing on a slippery pavement atmospheric circles
of black brown and brown red, and sometimes a larger circle of pale
yellow; the colours of old bruised fruits, medlars, melons, and the smell
of them; nothing is more desolate. Neither of us knew where we were, nor
where we were going. We struggled through an interminable succession of
squalid streets, from the one lamp visible to its neighbour in the
darkness: you might have fancied yourself peering at the head of an old
saint on a smoky canvas; it was like the painting of light rather than
light. Figures rushed by; we saw no faces.

Temple spoke solemnly: 'Our dinner-hour at home is half-past six.' A
street-boy overheard him and chaffed him. Temple got the worst of it, and
it did him good, for he had the sweetest nature in the world. We declined
to be attended by link-boys; they would have hurt our sense of
independence. Possessed of a sovereign faith that, by dint of resolution,
I should ultimately penetrate to the great square enclosing the Bench, I
walked with the air of one who had the map of London in his eye and could
thread it blindfold. Temple was thereby deceived into thinking that I
must somehow have learnt the direction I meant to take, and knew my way,
though at the slightest indication of my halting and glancing round his
suspicions began to boil, and he was for asking some one the name of the
ground we stood on: he murmured, 'Fellows get lost in London.' By this
time he clearly understood that I had come to London on purpose: he could
not but be aware of the object of my coming, and I was too proud, and he
still too delicate, to allude to it.

The fog choked us. Perhaps it took away the sense of hunger by filling us
as if we had eaten a dinner of soot. We had no craving to eat until long
past the dinner-hour in Temple's house, and then I would rather have
plunged into a bath and a bed than have been requested to sit at a feast;
Temple too, I fancy. We knew we were astray without speaking of it.
Temple said, 'I wish we hadn't drunk that champagne.' It seemed to me
years since I had tasted the delicious crushing of the sweet bubbles in
my mouth. But I did not b