he had
been seeking appeared. To his right there surged up in the darkness the
darker summit of the Roman fort, and the streaming fire of the great full
moon glowed through the bars of the wizard oaks, and made a halo shine
about the hill. He was now quite close to the white appearance, and saw
that it was only a woman walking swiftly down the lane; the floating
movement was an effect due to the somber air and the moon's glamour. At
the gate, where he had spent so many hours gazing at the fort, they
walked foot to foot, and he saw it was Annie Morgan.

"Good evening, Master Lucian," said the girl, "it's very dark, sir,
indeed."

"Good evening, Annie," he answered, calling her by her name for the first
time, and he saw that she smiled with pleasure. "You are out late, aren't
you?"

"Yes, sir; but I've been taking a bit of supper to old Mrs. Gibbon. She's
been very poorly the last few days, and there's nobody to do anything for
her."

Then there were really people who helped one another; kindness and pity
were not mere myths, fictions of "society," as useful as Doe and Roe, and
as non-existent. The thought struck Lucian with a shock; the evening's
passion and delirium, the wild walk and physical fatigue had almost
shattered him in body and mind. He was "degenerate," _decadent_, and the
rough rains and blustering winds of life, which a stronger man would have
laughed at and enjoyed, were to him "hail-storms and fire-showers." After
all, Messrs Beit, the publishers, were only sharp men of business, and
these terrible Dixons and Gervases and Colleys merely the ordinary
limited clergy and gentry of a quiet country town; sturdier sense would
have dismissed Dixon as an old humbug, Stanley Gervase, Esquire, J.P., as
a "bit of a bounder," and the ladies as "rather a shoddy lot." But he was
walking slowly now in painful silence, his heavy, lagging feet striking
against the loose stones. He was not thinking of the girl beside him;
only something seemed to swell and grow and swell within his heart; it
was all the torture of his days, weary hopes and weary disappointment,
scorn rankling and throbbing, and the thought "I had rather call the
devils my brothers and live with them in hell." He choked and gasped for
breath, and felt involuntary muscles working in his face, and the
impulses of a madman stirring him; he himself was in truth the
realization of the vision of Caermaen that night, a city with moldering
walls beset by the