those days when the air is full of a new, mysterious fragrance, when
the sunshine lies like a flood upon the earth, and high clouds hang
motionless in the far-distant blue--a day at the very heels of which it
would seem that summer was lurking. Maurice Guest stood at his window,
both sides of which were flung open, drinking in the warm air, and
gazing absently up at the stretch of sky, against which the dark
roof-lines of the houses opposite stood out abruptly. His hands were
in his pockets, and, to a light beat of the foot, he hummed softly to
himself, but what, he could not have told: whether some fragment of
melody that had lingered in a niche of his brain and now came to his
lips, or whether a mere audible expression of his mood. The strong,
unreal sun of the afternoon was just beginning to reach the house; it
slanted in, golden, by the side of the window, and threw on the wall
above the piano, a single long bar of light.

He leaned over and looked down into the street far below--still no one
there! But it was only half-past four. He stretched himself long and
luxuriously, as if, by doing so, he would get rid of a restlessness
which arose from repressed physical energy, and also from an
impatience to be more keenly conscious of life, to feel it, as it
were, quicken in him, not unakin to that passionate impulse towards
perfection, which, out-of-doors, was urging on the sap and loosening
firm green buds: he had a day's imprisonment behind him, and all
spring's magic was at work to ferment his blood. How small and close
the room was! He leaned out on the sill, as far out as he could, in
the sun. It was shining full down the street now, gilding the
canal-like river at the foot, and throwing over the tall, dingy houses
on the opposite side, a tawdry brightness, which, unlike that of the
morning with its suggestion of dewy shade, only served to bring out
the shabbiness of broken plaster and paintless window; a shamefaced