stage of his home-life almost in a bright light, and even with a
touch of melancholy, as something that was fast slipping from him,
never to be there in all its entirety, exactly as it now was, again:
the last calm hour of respite before he plunged into the triumphs, but
also into the tossings and agitations of the future.

III.

It was April, and a day such as April will sometimes bring: one of
those days when the air is full of a new, mysterious fragrance, when
the sunshine lies like a flood upon the earth, and high clouds hang
motionless in the far-distant blue--a day at the very heels of which it
would seem that summer was lurking. Maurice Guest stood at his window,
both sides of which were flung open, drinking in the warm air, and
gazing absently up at the stretch of sky, against which the dark
roof-lines of the houses opposite stood out abruptly. His hands were in
his pockets, and, to a light beat of the foot, he hummed softly to
himself, but what, he could not have told: whether some fragment of
melody that had lingered in a niche of his brain and now came to his
lips, or whether a mere audible expression of his mood. The strong,
unreal sun of the afternoon was just beginning to reach the house; it
slanted in, golden, by the side of the window, and threw on the wall
above the piano, a single long bar of light.

He leaned over and looked down into the street far below--still no one
there! But it was only half-past four. He stretched himself long and
luxuriously, as if, by doing so, he would get rid of a restlessness
which arose from repressed physical energy, and also from an impatience
to be more keenly conscious of life, to feel it, as it were, quicken in
him, not unakin to that passionate impulse towards perfection, which,
out-of-doors, was urging on the sap and loosening firm green buds: he
had a day's imprisonment behind him, and all spring's magic was at work
to ferment his blood. How small and close the room was! He leaned out
on the sill, as far out as he could, in the sun. It was shining full
down the street now, gilding the canal-like river at the foot, and
throwing over the tall, dingy houses on the opposite side, a tawdry
brightness, which, unlike that of the morning with its suggestion of
dewy shade, only served to bring out the shabbiness of broken plaster
and paintless window; a shamefaced yet aggressive shabbiness, where
high-arched doorways and wide entries spoke to better days, and also