uced to
misery by long and grievous penance. People who chanced to see him could
not help saying to one another: "How ill and wretched that Lucian Taylor
looks!" They were of course quite unaware of the joy and luxury in which
his real life was spent, and some of them began to pity him, and to speak
to him kindly.

It was too late for that. The friendly words had as much lost their
meaning as the words of contempt. Edward Dixon hailed him cheerfully in
the street one day:

"Come in to my den, won't you, old fellow?" he said. "You won't see the
pater. I've managed to bag a bottle of his old port. I know you smoke
like a furnace, and I've got some ripping cigars. You will come, won't
you! I can tell you the pater's booze is first rate."

He gently declined and went on. Kindness and unkindness, pity and
contempt had become for him mere phrases; he could not have distinguished
one from the other. Hebrew and Chinese, Hungarian and Pushtu would be
pretty much alike to an agricultural laborer; if he cared to listen he
might detect some general differences in sound, but all four tongues
would be equally devoid of significance.

To Lucian, entranced in the garden of Avallaunius, it seemed very strange
that he had once been so ignorant of all the exquisite meanings of life.
Now, beneath the violet sky, looking through the brilliant trellis of the
vines, he saw the picture; before, he had gazed in sad astonishment at
the squalid rag which was wrapped about it.

V

And he was at last in the city of the unending murmuring streets, a part
of the stirring shadow, of the amber-lighted gloom.

It seemed a long time since he had knelt before his sweetheart in the
lane, the moon-fire streaming upon them from the dark circle of the
fort, the air and the light and his soul full of haunting, the touch of
the unimaginable thrilling his heart; and now he sat in a terrible
"bed-sitting-room" in a western suburb, confronted by a heap and litter
of papers on the desk of a battered old bureau.

He had put his breakfast-tray out on the landing, and was thinking of the
morning's work, and of some very dubious pages that he had blackened the
night before. But when he had lit his disreputable briar, he remembered
there was an unopened letter waiting for him on the table; he had
recognized the vague, staggering script of Miss Deacon, his cousin. There
was not much news; his father was "just the same as usual," there had
been a good de