and heavy bodies had sunk down
in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices
went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick
waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking
the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of
desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise;
breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor
omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast
nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one
within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried
aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into
the air.

THE MARK ON THE WALL

Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first
looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is
necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the
steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three
chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it must
have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea, for I
remember that I was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the
mark on the wall for the first time. I looked up through the smoke of my
cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning coals, and
that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came
into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up
the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark
interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy, an automatic fancy, made
as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the
white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.

How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little
way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it....
If that mark was made by a nail, it can't have been for a picture, it
must have been for a miniature--the miniature of a lady with white
powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A
fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have
chosen pictures in that way--an old picture for an old room. That is the
sort of people they were--very interesting people, and I think of them
so often, in such queer places, because one will never see them again,
never know wha