red darling were at an end,
and that within an hour I should be holding her in my arms.

M.C.

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH CHAPTER

There must be a physical power in fierce emotion to deprive us of the
use of our senses of hearing and even of sight, for my memory of what
happened after I left the Jew's has blank places in it.

Trying to recall the incidents of that night is like travelling on a
moorland road under a flying moon, with sometimes the whitest light in
which everything is clearly seen, and then the blackest darkness.

I remember taking the electric car going west, and seeing the
Whitechapel Road shooting by me, with its surging crowds of pedestrians,
its public-houses, its Cinema shows, and its Jewish theatres.

I remember getting down at Aldgate Pump, and walking through that dead
belt of the City, which, lying between east and west, is alive like a
beehive by day and silent and deserted by night.

I remember seeing an old man, with a face like a rat's, picking up
cigar-ends from the gutters before the dark Banks, and then a flock of
sheep bleating before a barking dog as they were driven through the
echoing streets from the river-side towards the slaughter-houses near
Smithfield Market.

I remember that when I came to St. Paul's the precincts of the cathedral
were very quiet and the big clock was striking nine. But on Ludgate Hill
the traffic was thick, and when I reached Fleet Street crowds of people
were standing in front of the newspaper offices, reading large placards
in written characters which were pasted on the windows.

I remember that I did not look at these placards, thinking their news
was nothing to me, who had not seen a newspaper for months and for whom
the world was now eclipsed, but that as I stepped round one of the
crowds, which extended to the middle of the street, somebody said:

"He has landed at Southampton, it seems."

I remember that when I reached Charing Cross I found myself on the
fringe of another and much larger crowd, and that the people, who seemed
to be waiting for somebody and were chatting with a noise like the
crackling of thorns under a pot, were saying:

"His train is fifty minutes late, so we've half an hour to wait yet."

Then I remember that walking at random round St Martin's Church into
Leicester Square I came upon three "public women" who were swinging
along with a high step and laughing loudly, and that