lights across the gloom; watch the traffic which is for me but so
many passing lamps telling their tale by varying height and
brightness. I hear under my window the sprint of over-tired
horses, the rattle of uncertain wheels as the street-sellers hasten
south; the jangle of cab bells as the theatre-goers take their
homeward way; the gruff altercation of weary men, the unmelodious
song and clamorous laugh of women whose merriment is wearier still.
Then comes a time of stillness when the light in the sky waxes and
wanes, when the cloud-drifts obscure the stars, and I gaze out into
blackness set with watching eyes. No sound comes from without but
the voice of the night-wind and the cry of the hour. The clock on
the mantelpiece ticks imperatively, for a check has fallen on the
familiarity which breeds a disregard of common things, and a reason
has to be sought for each sound which claims a hearing. The pause
is wonderful while it lasts, but it is not for long. The working
world awakes, the poorer brethren take up the burden of service;
the dawn lights the sky; remembrance cries an end to forgetting.

Sometimes in the country on a night in early summer you may shut
the cottage door to step out into an immense darkness which palls
heaven and earth. Going forward into the embrace of the great
gloom, you are as a babe swaddled by the hands of night into
helpless quiescence. Your feet tread an unseen path, your hands
grasp at a void, or shrink from the contact they cannot realise;
your eyes are holden; your voice would die in your throat did you
seek to rend the veil of that impenetrable silence.

Shut in by the intangible dark, we are brought up against those
worlds within worlds blotted out by our concrete daily life. The
working of the great microcosm at which we peer dimly through the