When I had been in London a year or two, and the place with its hordes
was become less strange and less formidable to me, I began to discover
it for myself. Gradually the towering cliffs resolved themselves into
houses, and the houses into shrouded holds, each with character and
each hiding a mystery. They now stood solitary which had before been
an agglutinated mass. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.... I knew
one from the other by sight, and had for each a specific sensation of
attraction or repulsion, of affection or terror. I read through the
shut doors, I saw through the blank windows; not a house upon my daily
road but held a drama or promised a tragedy. I had no sense for comedy
in those days; life to me, waking life, was always a dreadful thing.
And sometimes my bodily eyes had glimpses which confirmed my
fancy--unexpected, sudden and vivid flashes behind curtained windows.
I once saw two men fighting, shadowed black upon a white blind. I once
looked out of a window at the Army and Navy Stores into a mean
bedroom across the way. There was a maidservant in there, making beds,
emptying slops, tidying this and that. Quite suddenly she threw her
head up with a real despair, and next moment she was on her knees by
the bed. Praying! I never saw prayer like that in this country. The
soul went streaming from her mouth like blown smoke. And again, one
night, very late, I was going to bed, and leaned out of my window for
air. Before me, across back yards, leafless trees, and a litter of
packing-cases and straw, rose up a dark rampart of houses, in the
midst of it a lit window. I saw a poorly furnished sitting-room--a
table with a sewing machine, a paraffin lamp, a chair with an
antimacassar. A man in his shirt sleeves sat there by the table,
smoking a pipe. Then the door opened and a tall, slim woman came in,
all in white, with loose dark hair floating about her shoulders. She
stood between door and table and rested her hand upon the edge of the
table. The man, after a while of continuing to read, quite suddenly