or some other still more
advanced spirit. It seemed strange to me as I dressed that evening. I do
not know how long it was since I had put on a dinner-jacket. With the
exception of that one other visit to Baron Wilderling this seemed to be
my one link with the old world, and it was curious to feel its
fascination, its air of comfort and order and cleanliness, its courtesy
and discipline. "I think I'll leave these rooms," I thought as I looked
about me, "and take a decent flat somewhere."

It is a strange fact, behind which there lies, I believe, some odd sort
of moral significance, that I cannot now recall the events of that
evening in any kind of clear detail. I remember that it was bitterly
cold, with a sky that was flooded with stars. The snow had a queer
metallic sheen upon it as though it were coloured ice, and I can see now
the Nevski like a slab of some fiercely painted metal rising out of the
very smack of our horses' hoofs as my sleigh sped along--as though,
silkworm-like, I spun it out of the entrails of the sledge. It was all
light and fire and colour that night, with towers of gold and frosted
green, and even the black crowds that thronged the Nevski pavements shot
with colour.

Somewhere in one of Shorthouse's stories--in _The Little Schoolmaster
Mark_, I think--he gives a curious impression of a whirling fantastic
crowd of revellers who evoke by their movements some evil pattern in the
air around them, and the boy who is standing in their midst sees this
dark twisted sinister picture forming against the gorgeous walls and the
coloured figures until it blots out the whole scene and plunges him into
darkness. I will not pretend that on this evening I discerned anything
sinister or ominous in the gay scene that the Alexandra Theatre offered
me, but I was nevertheless weighed down by some quite unaccountable
depression that would not let me alone. For this I can see now that
Lawrence was very largely responsible. When I met him and the
Wilderlings in the foyer of the theatre I saw at once that he was
greatly changed.

The clear open expression of his eyes was gone; his mind was far away
from his company--and it was as though I could see into his brain and
watch the repetition of the old argument occurring again and again and
again with always the same questions and answers, the same reproaches,
the same defiances, the same obstinacies. He was caught by what was
perhaps the first crisis of his life. He had n