He had broken away, but
now he felt the mesh of her net about him, a desire for her that was a
madness, as if she held every nerve in his body and drew him to her, to
her mystic world, to the rosebush where every flower was a flame.

He dreamed all night of the perilous things he had refused, and it was
loss to awake in the morning, pain to return to the world. The frost had
broken and the fog had rolled away, and the grey street was filled with
a clear grey light. Again he looked out on the long dull sweep of the
monotonous houses, hidden for the past weeks by a curtain of mist. Heavy
rain had fallen in the night, and the garden rails were still dripping,
the roofs still dark with wet, all down the line the dingy white blinds
were drawn in the upper windows. Not a soul walked the street; every one
was asleep after the exertions of the night before; even on the main road
it was only at intervals that some straggler paddled by. Presently a
woman in a brown Ulster shuffled off on some errand, then a man in
shirt-sleeves poked out his head, holding the door half-open, and stared
up at a window opposite. After a few minutes he slunk in again, and three
loafers came slouching down the street, eager for mischief or beastliness
of some sort. They chose a house that seemed rather smarter than the
rest, and, irritated by the neat curtains, the little grass plot with its
dwarf shrub, one of the ruffians drew out a piece of chalk and wrote some
words on the front door. His friends kept watch for him, and the
adventure achieved, all three bolted, bellowing yahoo laughter. Then a
bell began, tang, tang, tang, and here and there children appeared on
their way to Sunday-school, and the chapel "teachers" went by with
verjuice eyes and lips, scowling at the little boy who cried "Piper,
piper!" On the main road many respectable people, the men shining and
ill-fitted, the women hideously bedizened, passed in the direction of the
Independent nightmare, the stuccoed thing with Doric columns, but on the
whole life was stagnant. Presently Lucian smelt the horrid fumes of roast
beef and cabbage; the early risers were preparing the one-o'clock meal,
but many lay in bed and put off dinner till three, with the effect of
prolonging the cabbage atmosphere into the late afternoon. A drizzly rain
began as the people were coming out of church, and the mothers of little
boys in velvet and little girls in foolishness of every kind were
impelled to slap t