e may cast
away the forms of human beings, and yet retain the passion which seemed
inseparable from their existence in the flesh. Now this passion burnt on
his horizon, as the winter sun makes a greenish pane in the west through
thinning clouds. His eyes were set on something infinitely far and
remote; by that light he felt he could walk, and would, in future, have
to find his way. But that was all there was left to him of a populous
and teeming world.

CHAPTER XIII

The lunch hour in the office was only partly spent by Denham in the
consumption of food. Whether fine or wet, he passed most of it pacing
the gravel paths in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The children got to know
his figure, and the sparrows expected their daily scattering of
bread-crumbs. No doubt, since he often gave a copper and almost always a
handful of bread, he was not as blind to his surroundings as he thought
himself.

He thought that these winter days were spent in long hours before
white papers radiant in electric light; and in short passages through
fog-dimmed streets. When he came back to his work after lunch he carried
in his head a picture of the Strand, scattered with omnibuses, and of
the purple shapes of leaves pressed flat upon the gravel, as if his eyes
had always been bent upon the ground. His brain worked incessantly, but
his thought was attended with so little joy that he did not willingly
recall it; but drove ahead, now in this direction, now in that; and came
home laden with dark books borrowed from a library.

Mary Datchet, coming from the Strand at lunch-time, saw him one day
taking his turn, closely buttoned in an overcoat, and so lost in thought
that he might have been sitting in his own room.

She was overcome by something very like awe by the sight of him; then
she felt much inclined to laugh, although her pulse beat faster. She
passed him, and he never saw her. She came back and touched him on the
shoulder.

"Gracious, Mary!" he exclaimed. "How you startled me!"

"Yes. You looked as if you were walking in your sleep," she said. "Are
you arranging some terrible love affair? Have you got to reconcile a
desperate couple?"

"I wasn't thinking about my work," Ralph replied, rather hastily. "And,
besides, that sort of thing's not in my line," he added, rather grimly.

The morning was fine, and they had still some minutes of leisure to
spend. They had not met for two or three weeks, and Mary had much to
say to Ralph; but she