imagination of God.

Those glances that men flung upon him, that sudden raising of the eyes
to his face . . . a man greeted him, another man waved his hand always
this same suspicion . . . the great grey shadow that bent and whispered
in their ears.

He saw, too, another picture. High above him some great power was
seated, and down to earth there bent a mighty Hand. Into this Hand
very gently, very tenderly, certain figures were drawn--Mrs. Craven,
Margaret, Rupert, Bunning, even Lawrence. Olva was dragging with him,
into the heart of some terrible climax, these so diverse persons; he
could not escape now--other lives were twisted into the fabric of his
own.

And yet with this certainty of the futility of it, he must still
struggle . . . to the very end.

On that cold day the world seemed to stand, as men gather about a
coursing match, with hard eyes and jeering faces to watch the hopeless
flight. . . .

2

He fetched Banker from the stable where he was kept and set off along
the hard white road. He had behaved very badly to Bunker, a but the dog
showed no signs of delight at his release. On other days when he had
been kept in his stable for a considerable time he had gone mad with joy
and jumped at his master, wagging his whole body in excitement. Now he
walked very slowly by Olva's side, a little way behind him; when
Olva spoke to him he wagged his tail, but as though it were duty that
impelled it.

The air grew colder aid colder--slowly now there had stolen on to the
heart of the blue sky white pinnacles of cloud--a dazzling whiteness,
but catching, mysteriously, the shadow of the gold light that heralded
the setting sun. These clouds were charged with snow; as they hung there
they seemed to radiate from their depths an even more piercing coldness.
They hung above Olva like a vast mountain range and had in their outline
so sharp and real an existence that they were part of the hard black
horizon, rising, immediately, out of the long, low, shivering flats.

There was no sound in all the world; behind him, sharply, the Cambridge
towers bit the sky--before him like a clenched hand was the little
wood.

The silence seemed to have a rhythm and voice of its own so that if one
listened, quite clearly the tramp of a marching army came over the level
ground. Always an army marching--and when suddenly a bird rose from the
canal with a sharp cry the tramping was caught, with the bird, for an
instant, into the air