t was two o'clock. This was
the time to go. But a boisterous wind had risen, and was blustering
round the house. He said to himself that he would wait still a little
longer, to see if it did not subside. In waiting, he slept again,
heavily, as he had not done for many a night, and when he wakened next,
a clock was striking four. He rose at once, and with his boots in his
hand, crept out of the house.

Day was breaking; as he walked, a thin streak of grey in the east
widened with extreme rapidity, and became a bank of pale grey light. He
met an army of street-sweepers, indistinguishably male and female,
returning from their work, their long brooms over their shoulders. It
had rained a little, and the pavements were damp and shining. The wind
had dropped to a mere morning breeze, which met him at street-corners.
Before his mind's eye rose a vision of the coming day. He saw one of
those early spring days of illimitable blue highness and white, woofy
clouds, which stand stationary where the earth meets the sky; the
brightness of the sun makes the roads seem whiter and the grass
greener, bringing out new tints and colours in everything it touches.
Over it all would run this light, swift wind, bending the buds, and
even, towards afternoon, throwing up a fine white dust.--And it was to
the thought of the dust that his mind clung most tenaciously, as to
some homely and familiar thing which he would never see again.

He had made straight for the well-known seat with the bosky background.
Arrived at it, he went a few steps aside, into an open space among the
undergrowth, which was now generously sprinkled with buds. The leaves
that had fallen during the previous autumn made a carpet under his
feet. Somewhere, in the distance, a band was playing: a body of
soldiers was being marched out to exercise. He opened the case he was
carrying, and laid it on the seat. He was not conscious of feeling
afraid; if he had a fear, it was only lest, in his inexperience, he
should do what he had to do, clumsily. In loosening the clothes at his
neck, however, he perceived that his hand was shaking, and this made
him aware that his heart also was beating unevenly. He stood and
fumbled with his collar-stud, which he could not unfasten at once, and,
while he was busied thus, the mists that blinded him fell away. He
ceased, abruptly, to be the mere automaton that had moved and acted,
without will of its own, for the past four-and-twenty hours. Standin