looked like masses of jade against the morning sky, like masses of
green jade against the pink petals of some marvellous rose. Lord
Arthur felt curiously affected, he could not tell why. There was
something in the dawn's delicate loveliness that seemed to him
inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that break in
beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics, too, with their
rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a
strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and
the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of
tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew
anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery-
coloured joys, and its horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars
from morn to eve. Probably it was to them merely a mart where they
brought their fruits to sell, and where they tarried for a few hours
at most, leaving the streets still silent, the houses still asleep.
It gave him pleasure to watch them as they went by. Rude as they
were, with their heavy, hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward gait,
they brought a little of a ready with them. He felt that they had
lived with Nature, and that she had taught them peace. He envied
them all that they did not know.

By the time he had reached Belgrave Square the sky was a faint blue,
and the birds were beginning to twitter in the gardens.



CHAPTER III