r take some action or beat his head against the wall.

Then he went deliberately to Ilkeston, in silence, intent and
beaten. He drank to get drunk. He gulped down the brandy, and
more brandy, till his face became pale, his eyes burning. And
still he could not get free. He went to sleep in drunken
unconsciousness, woke up at four o'clock in the morning and
continued drinking. He would get free. Gradually the
tension in him began to relax. He began to feel happy. His
riveted silence was unfastened, he began to talk and babble. He
was happy and at one with all the world, he was united with all
flesh in a hot blood-relationship. So, after three days of
incessant brandy-drinking, he had burned out the youth from his
blood, he had achieved this kindled state of oneness with all
the world, which is the end of youth's most passionate desire.
But he had achieved his satisfaction by obliterating his own
individuality, that which it depended on his manhood to preserve
and develop.

So he became a bout-drinker, having at intervals these bouts
of three or four days of brandy-drinking, when he was drunk for
the whole time. He did not think about it. A deep resentment
burned in him. He kept aloof from any women, antagonistic.

When he was twenty-eight, a thick-limbed, stiff, fair man
with fresh complexion, and blue eyes staring very straight
ahead, he was coming one day down from Cossethay with a load of
seed out of Nottingham. It was a time when he was getting ready
for another bout of drinking, so he stared fixedly before him,
watchful yet absorbed, seeing everything and aware of nothing,
coiled in himself. It was early in the year.

He walked steadily beside the horse, the load clanked behind
as the hill descended steeper. The road curved down-hill before
him, under banks and hedges, seen only for a few yards
ahead.

Slowly turning the curve at the steepest part of the slope,
his horse britching between the shafts, he saw a woman
approaching. But he was thinking for the moment of the
horse.

Then he turned to look at her. She was dressed in black, was
apparently rather small and slight, beneath her long black
cloak, and she wore a black bonnet. She walked hastily, as if
unseeing, her head rather forward. It was her curious, absorbed,
flitting motion, as if she were passing unseen by everybody,
that first arrested him.

She had heard the cart, and looked up. Her face was pale and
clear, she had thick dark eyebrows and a