at the close of a summer day. He had
almost determined that he would knock at the door and ask if they would
take him as a lodger, when he saw a child running towards him down the
lane. It was a little girl, with bright curls tossing about her head,
and, as she came on, the sunlight glowed upon her, illuminating her
brick-red frock and the yellow king-cups in her hat. She had run with her
eyes on the ground, chirping and laughing to herself, and did not see
Lucian till she was quite near him. She started and glanced into his eyes
for a moment, and began to cry; he stretched out his hand, and she ran
from him screaming, frightened no doubt by what was to her a sudden and
strange apparition. He turned back towards London, and the mist folded
him in its thick darkness, for on that evening it was tinged with black.
It was only by the intensest strain of resolution that he did not yield
utterly to the poisonous anodyne which was always at hand. It had been a
difficult struggle to escape from the mesh of the hills, from the music
of the fauns, and even now he was drawn by the memory of these old
allurements. But he felt that here, in his loneliness, he was in greater
danger, and beset by a blacker magic. Horrible fancies rushed wantonly
into his mind; he was not only ready to believe that something in his
soul sent a shudder through all that was simple and innocent, but he came
trembling home one Saturday night, believing, or half-believing, that
he was in communion with evil. He had passed through the clamorous and
blatant crowd of the "high street," where, as one climbed the hill, the
shops seemed all aflame, and the black night air glowed with the flaring
gas-jets and the naphtha-lamps, hissing and wavering before the February
wind. Voices, raucous, clamant, abominable, were belched out of the
blazing public-houses as the doors swung to and fro, and above these
doors were hideous brassy lamps, very slowly swinging in a violent blast
of air, so that they might have been infernal thuribles, censing the
people. Some man was calling his wares in one long continuous shriek
that never stopped or paused, and, as a respond, a deeper, louder voice
roared to him from across the road. An Italian whirled the handle of his
piano-organ in a fury, and a ring of imps danced mad figures around him,
danced and flung up their legs till the rags dropped from some of them,
and they still danced on. A flare of naphtha, burning with a rushing
nois