books
and heavy registers, without brains and muscles and perplexities;
something hardly useful and decidedly inferior.

And he--the office hours being over--wanted to know if he could be of
any use to me!

I ought--properly speaking--I ought to have been moved to tears. But I
did not even think of it. It was merely another miraculous manifestation
of that day of miracles. I parted from him as if he were a mere symbol.
I floated down the staircase. I floated out of the official and imposing
portal. I went on floating along.

I use that word rather than the word "flew," because I have a distinct
impression that, though uplifted by my aroused youth, my movements were
deliberate enough. To that mixed white, brown, and yellow portion of
mankind, out abroad on their own affairs, I presented the appearance
of a man walking rather sedately. And nothing in the way of abstraction
could have equalled my deep detachment from the forms and colours of
this world. It was, as it were, final.

And yet, suddenly, I recognized Hamilton. I recognized him without
effort, without a shock, without a start. There he was, strolling toward
the Harbour Office with his stiff, arrogant dignity. His red face made
him noticeable at a distance. It flamed, over there, on the shady side
of the street.

He had perceived me, too. Something (unconscious exuberance of spirits
perhaps) moved me to wave my hand to him elaborately. This lapse from
good taste happened before I was aware that I was capable of it.

The impact of my impudence stopped him short, much as a bullet might
have done. I verily believe he staggered, though as far as I could see
he didn't actually fall. I had gone past in a moment and did not turn my
head. I had forgotten his existence.

The next ten minutes might have been ten seconds or ten centuries for
all my consciousness had to do with it. People might have been falling
dead around me, houses crumbling, guns firing, I wouldn't have known.
I was thinking: "By Jove! I have got it." _It_ being the command. It had
come about in a way utterly unforeseen in my modest day-dreams.

I perceived that my imagination had been running in conventional
channels and that my hopes had always been drab stuff. I had envisaged a
command as a result of a slow course of promotion in the employ of some
highly respectable firm. The reward of faithful service. Well, faithful
service was all right. One would naturally give that for one's own sake,