beat again and again upon the window. He imagined
that all his thoughts of home, of the old rectory amongst the elms, had
conjured into his mind the sound of the storm upon the trees, for,
tonight, very clearly he heard the creaking of the boughs, the noise of
boughs moaning and beating and weeping on the walls, and even a pattering
of wet, on wet earth, as if there were a shrub near the window that shook
off the raindrops, before the gust.

That thrill, as it were a shudder of fear, passed over him again, and he
knew not what had made him afraid. There were some dark shadow on his
mind that saddened him; it seemed as if a vague memory of terrible days
hung like a cloud over his thought, but it was all indefinite, perhaps
the last grim and ragged edge of the melancholy wrack that had swelled
over his life and the bygone years. He shivered and tried to rouse
himself and drive away the sense of dread and shame that seemed so real
and so awful, and yet he could not grasp it. But the torpor of sleep, the
burden of the work that he had ended a few hours before, still weighed
down his limb and bound his thoughts. He could scarcely believe that he
had been busy at his desk a little while ago, and that just before the
winter day closed it and the rain began to fall he had laid down the pen
with a sigh of relief, and had slept in his chair. It was rather as if he
had slumbered deeply through a long and weary night, as if an awful
vision of flame and darkness and the worm that dieth not had come to him
sleeping. But he would dwell no more on the darkness; he went
back to the early days in London when he had said farewell to the hills
and to the waterpools, and had set to work in this little room in the
dingy street.

How he had toiled and labored at the desk before him! He had put away the
old wild hopes of the masterpiece and executed in a fury of inspiration,
wrought out in one white heat of creative joy; it was enough if by dint
of long perseverance and singleness of desire he could at last, in pain
and agony and despair, after failure and disappointment and effort
constantly renewed, fashion something of which he need not be ashamed. He
had put himself to school again, and had, with what patience he could
command, ground his teeth into the rudiments, resolved that at last he
would test out the heart of the mystery. They were good nights to
remember, these; he was glad to think of the little ugly room, with its
silly wall-pa