rain, and he was half ready
to cry out "Stop," and renew his order for toast, that he might seem
consecutive. The childishness of the wish made him ask himself what it
mattered. "I said 'Not till the day;' so, none to-day would mean that
I have reached the day." Shivering with the wet on his pallid skin, he
thought this over.

His landlady had used her discretion, and there was toast on the table.
A beam of Spring's morning sunlight illuminated the toast-rack. He sat,
and ate, and munched the doubt whether "not till" included the final
day, or stopped short of it. By this the state of his brain may be
conceived. A longing for beauty, and a dark sense of an incapacity to
thoroughly enjoy it, tormented him. He sent for his landlady's canary,
and the ready shrill song of the bird persuaded him that much of the
charm of music is wilfully swelled by ourselves, and can be by ourselves
withdrawn: that is to say, the great chasm and spell of sweet sounds is
assisted by the force of our imaginations. What is that force?--the heat
and torrent of the blood. When that exists no more--to one without hope,
for instance--what is music or beauty? Intrinsically, they are next
to nothing. He argued it out so, and convinced himself of his own
delusions, till his hand, being in the sunlight, gave him a pleasant
warmth. "That's something we all love," he said, glancing at the blue
sky above the roofs. "But there's little enough of it in this climate,"
he thought, with an eye upon the darker corners of his room. When he had
eaten, he sent word to his landlady to make up his week's bill. The week
was not at an end, and that good woman appeased before him, astonished,
saying: "To be sure, your habits is regular, but there's little items
one I'll guess at, and how make out a bill, Sir Purcy, and no items?"

He nodded his head.

"The country again?" she asked smilingly.

"I am going down there," he said.

"And beautiful at this time of the year, it is! though, for market
gardening, London beats any country I ever knew; and if you like
creature comforts, I always say, stop in London! And then the policemen!
who really are the greatest comfort of all to us poor women, and seem
sent from above especially to protect our weakness. I do assure you, Sir
Purcy, I feel it, and never knew a right-minded woman that did not. And
how on earth our grandmothers contrived to get about without them! But
there! people who lived before us do seem like the mos