ll a smart shower made him turn. When he got back to
the town the lamps were lit, throwing long, golden reflections on the
wet asphalt, but the rain had ceased; so he continued to pace absently
along through this blue twilight, hardly noticing the occasional dark
figures that passed. What was the reason, then, of this vague
unrest--this unknown longing--this dissatisfaction and almost despair?
Had he not been more fortunate than he could have hoped for? He had met
Miss Honnor and her mother in the morning, and had been with them all
the way down; they had been most kind to him; he had spent the best part
of the day with them; they had parted excellent friends; looking back,
he could not recall a single word he would have liked unsaid. Then a
happy fancy struck him: the moment he got up to town he would go and
seek out Maurice Mangan. There was a wholesome quality in Mangan's
saturnine contempt for the non-essential things of life; Mangan's clear
penetration, his covert sympathy, his scorn or mock-melancholy, would
help him to get rid of these vapors.

When Lionel returned to town a little after ten o'clock that night he
walked along to Mangan's rooms in Victoria Street, and found his friend
sitting in front of the fire alone.

"Glad you've looked in, Linn."

"Well, you don't seem to be busy, old chap; who ever saw you before
without a book or a pipe?"

"I've been musing, and dreaming dreams, and wishing I was a poet," said
this tall, thin, languid-looking man, whose abnormally keen gray eyes
were now grown a little absent. "It's only a fancy, you know--perhaps
something could be made of it by a fellow who could rhyme--"

"But what is it?" Lionel interposed.

"Well," said the other, still idly staring into the fire before him, "I
think I would call it 'The Cry of the Violets'--the violets that are
sold in bunches at the head of the Haymarket at midnight. Don't you
fancy there might be something in it--if you think of where they come
from--the woods and copses, children playing, and all that--and of what
they've come to--the gas-glare and drunken laughter and jeers. I would
make them tell their own story--I would make them cry to Heaven for
swift death and oblivion before the last degradation of being pinned on
to the flaunting dress." And then again he said: "No, I don't suppose
there's any thing in it; but I'll tell you what made me think of it.
This morning, as we were coming back from Winstead church--you know h