showed above the earth take any harm, and perhaps to-morrow
a line of blue or yellow would show through a slit in their green. But
the whirl of the atmosphere alone was in Denham's mood, and what of
star or blossom appeared was only as a light gleaming for a second upon
heaped waves fast following each other. He had not been able to speak to
Mary, though for a moment he had come near enough to be tantalized by
a wonderful possibility of understanding. But the desire to communicate
something of the very greatest importance possessed him completely; he
still wished to bestow this gift upon some other human being; he sought
their company. More by instinct than by conscious choice, he took the
direction which led to Rodney's rooms. He knocked loudly upon his door;
but no one answered. He rang the bell. It took him some time to accept
the fact that Rodney was out. When he could no longer pretend that the
sound of the wind in the old building was the sound of some one rising
from his chair, he ran downstairs again, as if his goal had been altered
and only just revealed to him. He walked in the direction of Chelsea.

But physical fatigue, for he had not dined and had tramped both far and
fast, made him sit for a moment upon a seat on the Embankment. One
of the regular occupants of those seats, an elderly man who had drunk
himself, probably, out of work and lodging, drifted up, begged a match,
and sat down beside him. It was a windy night, he said; times were hard;
some long story of bad luck and injustice followed, told so often that
the man seemed to be talking to himself, or, perhaps, the neglect of
his audience had long made any attempt to catch their attention seem
scarcely worth while. When he began to speak Ralph had a wild desire to
talk to him; to question him; to make him understand. He did, in fact,
interrupt him at one point; but it was useless. The ancient story of
failure, ill-luck, undeserved disaster, went down the wind, disconnected
syllables flying past Ralph's ears with a queer alternation of loudness
and faintness as if, at certain moments, the man's memory of his
wrongs revived and then flagged, dying down at last into a grumble of
resignation, which seemed to represent a final lapse into the accustomed
despair. The unhappy voice afflicted Ralph, but it also angered him. And
when the elderly man refused to listen and mumbled on, an odd image came
to his mind of a lighthouse besieged by the flying bodies of l