with what indignation he had rejected Garrod's offer
of knowledge. Brother Aloysius spared no blushes, whether of fiery shame
or furtive desire, and piece by piece Michael learned the fabric of
vice. He was informed coldly of facts whose existence he had hitherto
put down to his own most solitary and most intimate imaginations. Every
vague evil that came wickedly before sleep was now made real with
concrete examples; the vilest ideas, that hitherto he had considered
peculiar to himself and perhaps a few more sadly tempted dreamers
tossing through the vulnerable hours of the night, were commonplace to
Brother Aloysius, whose soul was twisted, whose mind was debased to
such an extent that he could boast of his delight in making the very
priest writhe and wince in the Confessional.

Conversations with Brother Aloysius were sufficiently thrilling
journeys, and Michael was always ready to follow his footsteps as one
might follow a noctambulatory cat. The Seven Sisters Road was the scene
of most of his adventures, if adventures they could be called, these
dissolute pilgrimages. Michael came to know this street as one comes to
know the street of a familiar dream. He walked along it in lavender
sunrises watching the crenellated horizon of housetops; he sauntered
through it slowly on dripping midnights, and on foggy November
afternoons he speculated upon the windows with their aqueous sheen of
incandescent gas. On summer dusks he pushed his way through the fetid
population that thronged it, smelling the odour of stale fruit exposed
for sale, and on sad grey Sabbaths he saw the ill-corseted servant girls
treading down the heels of their ugly boots, and plush-clad children who
continually dropped Sunday-school books in the mud.

And not only was Michael cognizant of the sordid street's exterior. He
heard the creak of bells by blistered doors, he tripped over mats in
narrow gloomy passages and felt his way up stale rickety stairs. Michael
knew many rooms in this street of dreams: but they were all much alike
with their muslin and patchouli, their aspidistras and yellowing
photographs. The ribbed pianos tintinnabulated harshly with songs cut
from the squalid sheets of Sunday papers: in unseen basements children
whined, while on the mantelpiece garish vases rattled to the vibration
of traffic.

Michael was also aware of the emotional crises that occur in the Seven
Sisters Road, from the muttered curses of the old street-walkers wi