was eager to get to his work, a curious and intricate
piece of analysis. So the battered bureau, the litter of papers, and the
thick fume of his pipe, engulfed him and absorbed him for the rest of
the morning. Outside were the dim October mists, the dreary and languid
life of a side street, and beyond, on the main road, the hum and jangle
of the gliding trains. But he heard none of the uneasy noises of the
quarter, not even the shriek of the garden gates nor the yelp of the
butcher on his round, for delight in his great task made him unconscious
of the world outside.

He had come by curious paths to this calm hermitage between Shepherd's
Bush and Acton Vale. The golden weeks of the summer passed on in their
enchanted procession, and Annie had not returned, neither had she
written. Lucian, on his side, sat apart, wondering why his longing for
her were not sharper. As he though of his raptures he would smile faintly
to himself, and wonder whether he had not lost the world and Annie with
it. In the garden of Avallaunius his sense of external things had grown
dim and indistinct; the actual, material life seemed every day to become
a show, a fleeting of shadows across a great white light. At last the
news came that Annie Morgan had been married from her sister's house to a
young farmer, to whom it appeared, she had been long engaged, and Lucian
was ashamed to find himself only conscious of amusement, mingled with
gratitude. She had been the key that opened the shut palace, and he was
now secure on the throne of ivory and gold. A few days after he had heard
the news he repeated the adventure of his boyhood; for the second time he
scaled the steep hillside, and penetrated the matted brake. He expected
violent disillusion, but his feeling was rather astonishment at the
activity of boyish imagination. There was no terror nor amazement now in
the green bulwarks, and the stunted undergrowth did not seem in any way
extraordinary. Yet he did not laugh at the memory of his sensations, he
was not angry at the cheat. Certainly it had been all illusion, all the
heats and chills of boyhood, its thoughts of terror were without
significance. But he recognized that the illusions of the child only
differed from those of the man in that they were more picturesque; belief
in fairies and belief in the Stock Exchange as bestowers of happiness
were equally vain, but the latter form of faith was ugly as well as
inept. It was better, he knew, and wi