going to bed in my airless chambers, and the prospect of gradual
suffocation, seemed, in my present restless frame of mind and
body, to be one and the same thing. I determined to stroll home
in the purer air by the most roundabout way I could take; to
follow the white winding paths across the lonely heath; and to
approach London through its most open suburb by striking into the
Finchley Road, and so getting back, in the cool of the new
morning, by the western side of the Regent's Park.

I wound my way down slowly over the heath, enjoying the divine
stillness of the scene, and admiring the soft alternations of
light and shade as they followed each other over the broken ground
on every side of me. So long as I was proceeding through this
first and prettiest part of my night walk my mind remained
passively open to the impressions produced by the view; and I
thought but little on any subject--indeed, so far as my own
sensations were concerned, I can hardly say that I thought at all.

But when I had left the heath and had turned into the by-road,
where there was less to see, the ideas naturally engendered by the
approaching change in my habits and occupations gradually drew
more and more of my attention exclusively to themselves. By the
time I had arrived at the end of the road I had become completely
absorbed in my own fanciful visions of Limmeridge House, of Mr.
Fairlie, and of the two ladies whose practice in the art of water-
colour painting I was so soon to superintend.

I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four
roads met--the road to Hampstead, along which I had returned, the
road to Finchley, the road to West End, and the road back to