h modern culture, they should have been--but to the fact
that they were loving and admiring themselves, and that entirely without
the trouble of thinking about it at all. The practice, too, of dividing
into couples was distinctly precious to them, for, though they never
failed to start out together, they never failed to come home two by two.
In this way did they put to confusion Whitman and Dostoievsky, and all
the other thinkers in Hampstead. In the daytime they all, save Alan,
felt that London ought to be blown up; but at night it undermined their
philosophies so that they sat silent on the tops of their respective
'buses, with arms twined in each other's. For then a something seemed to
have floated up from that mass of houses and machines, of men and trees,
and to be hovering above them, violet-colored, caught between the stars
and the lights, a spirit of such overpowering beauty that it drenched
even Alan in a kind of awe. After all, the huge creature that sat with
such a giant's weight on the country's chest, the monster that had
spoiled so many fields and robbed so many lives of peace and health,
could fly at night upon blue and gold and purple wings, murmur a
passionate lullaby, and fall into deep sleep!

One such night they went to the gallery at the opera, to supper at an
oyster-shop, under Alan's pilotage, and then set out to walk back to
Hampstead, timing themselves to catch the dawn. They had not gone twenty
steps up Southampton Row before Alan and Sheila were forty steps in
front. A fellow-feeling had made Derek and Nedda stand to watch an old
man who walked, tortuous, extremely happy, bidding them all come. And
when they moved on, it was very slowly, just keeping sight of the others
across the lumbered dimness of Covent Garden, where tarpaulin-covered
carts and barrows seemed to slumber under the blink of lamps and
watchmen's lanterns. Across Long Acre they came into a street where
there was not a soul save the two others, a long way ahead. Walking with
his arm tightly laced with hers, touching her all down one side, Derek
felt that it would be glorious to be attacked by night-birds in this
dark, lonely street, to have a splendid fight and drive them off,
showing himself to Nedda for a man, and her protector. But nothing save
one black cat came near, and that ran for its life. He bent round and
looked under the blue veil-thing that wrapped Nedda's head. Her
face seemed mysteriously lovely, and her eyes, lif