And, touching his forehead lightly with two fingers, he had hurried off
with the ever-springy step of one whose regularity habitually controls
his imagination.

Pausing a minute amongst the bushes, Hilary too had looked at the
lighted window which broke the dark front of his house, and his little
moonlight bulldog, peering round his legs, had gazed up also. Mr.
Stone was still standing, pen in hand, presumably deep in thought. His
silvered head and beard moved slightly to the efforts of his brain. He
came over to the window, and, evidently not seeing his son-in-law, faced
out into the night.

In that darkness were all the shapes and lights and shadows of a
London night in spring: the trees in dark bloom; the wan yellow of
the gas-lamps, pale emblems of the self-consciousness of towns; the
clustered shades of the tiny leaves, spilled, purple, on the surface of
the road, like bunches of black grapes squeezed down into the earth by
the feet of the passers-by. There, too, were shapes of men and women
hurrying home, and the great blocked shapes of the houses where they
lived. A halo hovered above the City--a high haze of yellow light,
dimming the stars. The black, slow figure of a policeman moved
noiselessly along the railings opposite.

From then till eleven o'clock, when he would make himself some cocoa on
a little spirit-lamp, the writer of the "Book of Universal Brotherhood"
would alternate between his bent posture above his manuscript and his
blank consideration of the night....

With a jerk, Hilary came back to his reflections beneath the bust of