narrow streets and freaked about the corners. There was little
temptation now to linger on one's steps. But Maurice Guest was loath to
return to the solitary room that stood to him for home, to shut himself
up with himself, inside four walls: and turning up his coat collar, he
began to walk slowly along the curved GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE. But the
streets were by this time black with people, most of whom came hurrying
towards him, brisk and bustling, and gay, in spite of the prevailing
dullness, at the prospect of the warm, familiar evening. He was
continually obliged to step off the pavement into the road, to allow a
bunch of merry, chattering girls, their cheeks coloured by the wind
beneath the dark fur of their hats, or a line of gaudy capped, thickset
students, to pass him by, unbroken; and it seemed to him that he was
more frequently off the pavement than on it. He began to feel
disconsolate among these jovial people, who were hastening forward,
with such spirit, to some end, and he had not gone far, before he
turned down a side street to be out of their way. Vaguely damped by his
environment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its charm, he gave
himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinking
over all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of the
dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitous
replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets,
quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he was
going. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangely
alike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: the dark old
houses, marshalled in rows on either side, stood as if lost in
contemplation, in the saddening dusk. The lighting of the street-lamps,
which started one by one into existence, and the conflict with the
fading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept from side
to side in the wind like a woman's hair--these things made his
surroundings seem still shadowier and less real.

He was roused from his reverie by finding himself on what was
apparently the outskirts of the town. With much difficulty he made his
way back, but he was still far from certain of his whereabouts, when an
unexpected turn to the right brought him out on the spacious
AUGUSTUSPLATZ, in front of the New Theatre. He had been in this square
once already, but now its appearance was changed. The big buildings
that flanked it were li