ort of scandal, and he was very fond of Hilary. If only
he knew the attitude Bianca would take up! He could not even guess it.

Thus, on that Saturday afternoon, the 4th of May, he felt for once such a
positive aversion from the reading of reviews, as men will feel from
their usual occupations when their nerves have been disturbed. He stayed
late at Chambers, and came straight home outside an omnibus.

The tide of life was flowing in the town. The streets were awash with
wave on wave of humanity, sucked into a thousand crossing currents. Here
men and women were streaming out from the meeting of a religious
congress, there streaming in at the gates of some social function; like
bright water confined within long shelves of rock and dyed with myriad
scales of shifting colour, they thronged Rotten Row, and along the closed
shop-fronts were woven into an inextricable network of little human
runlets. And everywhere amongst this sea of men and women could be seen
their shadows, meandering like streaks of grey slime stirred up from the
lower depths by some huge, never-ceasing finger. The innumerable roar of
that human sea climbed out above the roofs and trees, and somewhere in
illimitable space blended, and slowly reached the meeting-point of sound
and silence--that Heart where Life, leaving its little forms and
barriers, clasps Death, and from that clasp springs forth new-formed,
within new barriers.

Above this crowd of his fellow-creatures, Stephen drove, and the same
Spring wind which had made the elm-trees talk, whispered to him, and
tried to tell him of the million flowers it had fertilised, the million
leaves uncurled, the million ripples it had awakened on the sea, of the
million flying shadows flung by it across the Downs, and how into men's
hearts its scent had driven a million longings and sweet pains.

It was but moderately successful, for Stephen, like all men of culture
and neat habits, took Nature only at those moments when he had gone out
to take her, and of her wild heart he had a secret fear.

On his own doorstep he encountered Hilary coming out.

"I ran across Thyme and Martin in the Gardens," the latter said. "Thyme
brought me back to lunch, and here I've been ever since."

"Did she bring our young Sanitist in too?" asked Stephen dubiously.

"No," said Hilary.

"Good! That young man gets on my nerves." Taking his elder brother by
the arm, he added: "Will you come in again, old boy, or shall