n, in the stillness, Hilary seemed to hear, deep and very
faint, the sound as of some monster breathing, or the far beating of
muffed drums. From every side of the pale sleeping town it seemed to
come, under the moon's cold glamour. It rose, and fell, and rose, with
a weird, creepy rhythm, like a groaning of the hopeless and hungry. A
hansom cab rattled down the High Street; Hilary strained his ears after
the failing clatter of hoofs and bell. They died; there was silence.
Creeping nearer, drumming, throbbing, he heard again the beating of
that vast heart. It grew and grew. His own heart began thumping. Then,
emerging from that sinister dumb groan, he distinguished a crunching
sound, and knew that it was no muttering echo of men's struggles, but
only the waggons journeying to Covent Garden Market.

CHAPTER XIV

A WALK ABROAD

Thyme Dallison, in the midst of her busy life, found leisure to record
her recollections and ideas in the pages of old school notebooks. She
had no definite purpose in so doing, nor did she desire the solace of
luxuriating in her private feelings--this she would have scorned as out
of date and silly. It was done from the fulness of youthful energy,
and from the desire to express oneself that was "in the air." It was
everywhere, that desire: among her fellow-students, among her young
men friends, in her mother's drawing-room, and her aunt's studio.
Like sentiment and marriage to the Victorian miss, so was this duty to
express herself to Thyme; and, going hand-in-hand with it, the duty to
have a good and jolly youth. She never read again the thoughts which she
recorded, she took no care to lock them up, knowing that her liberty,
development, and pleasure were sacred things which no one would dream of
touching--she kept them stuffed down in a drawer among her handkerchiefs
and ties and blouses, together with the indelible fragment of a pencil.

This journal, naive and slipshod, recorded without order the current
impression of things on her mind.

In the early morning of the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the
foot of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck,
eyes bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away
and rubbing one bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of
self-expression. Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would
stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as
though life were too full of joy for her to finish a