s your notion all to fits. After all, the great
expense is the coal. It's not the stove--at least that's not the real
mischief. It's the coal is so dear. And here you are. Look at those oil
stoves. They don't burn any coal, but the cheapest fuel in the
world--oil; and for two pounds ten you can get a range that will do
everything you want.'

'Give me the book,' said Mary, 'and we will talk it over in the evening,
when you come home. Must you be going?'

Darnell cast an anxious glance at the clock.

'Good-bye,' and they kissed each other seriously and dutifully, and
Mary's eyes made Darnell think of those lonely water-pools, hidden in
the shadow of the ancient woods.

So, day after day, he lived in the grey phantasmal world, akin to death,
that has, somehow, with most of us, made good its claim to be called
life. To Darnell the true life would have seemed madness, and when, now
and again, the shadows and vague images reflected from its splendour
fell across his path, he was afraid, and took refuge in what he would
have called the sane 'reality' of common and usual incidents and
interests. His absurdity was, perhaps, the more evident, inasmuch as
'reality' for him was a matter of kitchen ranges, of saving a few
shillings; but in truth the folly would have been greater if it had been
concerned with racing stables, steam yachts, and the spending of many
thousand pounds.

But so went forth Darnell, day by day, strangely mistaking death for
life, madness for sanity, and purposeless and wandering phantoms for
true beings. He was sincerely of opinion that he was a City clerk,
living in Shepherd's Bush--having forgotten the mysteries and the
far-shining glories of the kingdom which was his by legitimate
inheritance.

II

All day long a fierce and heavy heat had brooded over the City, and as
Darnell neared home he saw the mist lying on all the damp lowlands,
wreathed in coils about Bedford Park to the south, and mounting to the
west, so that the tower of Acton Church loomed out of a grey lake. The
grass in the squares and on the lawns which he overlooked as the 'bus
lumbered wearily along was burnt to the colour of dust. Shepherd's Bush
Green was a wretched desert, trampled brown, bordered with monotonous
poplars, whose leaves hung motionless in air that was still, hot smoke.
The foot passengers struggled wearily along the pavements, and the reek
of the summer's end mingled with the breath of the brickfields made
Darn