window at the Army and Navy Stores into a mean
bedroom across the way. There was a maidservant in there, making beds,
emptying slops, tidying this and that. Quite suddenly she threw her
head up with a real despair, and next moment she was on her knees by
the bed. Praying! I never saw prayer like that in this country. The
soul went streaming from her mouth like blown smoke. And again, one
night, very late, I was going to bed, and leaned out of my window for
air. Before me, across back yards, leafless trees, and a litter of
packing-cases and straw, rose up a dark rampart of houses, in the
midst of it a lit window. I saw a poorly furnished sitting-room--a
table with a sewing machine, a paraffin lamp, a chair with an
antimacassar. A man in his shirt sleeves sat there by the table,
smoking a pipe. Then the door opened and a tall, slim woman came in,
all in white, with loose dark hair floating about her shoulders. She
stood between door and table and rested her hand upon the edge of the
table. The man, after a while of continuing to read, quite suddenly
looked up and saw her. They looked at each other motionless. He cast
down his paper, sprang up and went to her. He fell to his knees before
her and clasped hers. She looked across, gravely considering, then
laid her hand upon his head. That was all. I saw no more. Husband and
wife? Mother and son? Sinner and Saviour? What do I know?

As with the houses, homes of mystery, so with the men and women one
passed; homes, they too, of things hidden yet more deep. The noise of
the streets, at first paralysing, died down to a familiar rumble, and
the ear began to distinguish voices in the tide. Sounds of crying,
calls for help, hailings, laughter, tears, separated themselves and
appealed. You heard them, like the cries of the drowning, drifting by
you upon a dark tide-way. You could do nothing; a word would have
broken the spell. The mask which is always over the face would have
covered the tongue or throttled the larynx. You could do nothing but
hear.

Finally, the passing faces became sometimes penetrable, betrayed by
some chance gleam of the eyes, some flicker of the lips, a secret to
be shared, or conveyed by a hint some stabbing message out of the deep
into the deep. That is what I mean by the soul at the window. Every
one of us lives in a guarded house; door shut, windows curtained. Now
and then, however, you look up above the street level and catch a
glimpse of the scared pris