handed her in, lingering hat in hand for a moment as though hoping for
an invitation to follow her, which, however, did not come. The carriage
drove off, passing the spot where Douglas had lingered, and it seemed to
him that her eyes, gazing languidly out of the window, met his, and that
she started forward in her seat as though to call to him. But the
carriage received no summons to stop. It rolled out of the station and
turned westwards. Douglas turned and followed it on foot.

* * * * *

He walked at first very much like a man in a dream, quite heedless as to
direction, even without any fixed purpose before him. Here he was,
arrived after all at the first stage in his new life. He was a free
man, a living unit in this streaming horde of humanity. Of his old
life, the most pleasant memory which survived was the loneliness of the
hills and moorland high above his village home. Here he had spent whole
nights with nothing but the wind and the stars and the distant sheep
bells to keep him company. Here he had woven many dreams of this future
which lay now actually within his grasp. He had stolen up the mountain
path whilst the little village lay sleeping, and watched the shadows
pass across the hills, and the darkness steal softly down upon the
landscape stretched out like patchwork below. Then with the night and
the absence of all human sounds had come that sweet and mystical sense
of loneliness which had so often brought him peace at a time when the
smallness of the day's events and the tyranny of his home life had
filled him with bitterness. It was here that courage had come to him to
plan out his emancipation, here that he had fed his brain with sweet but
forbidden fruits. Something of that delicious loneliness was upon him
now. He was a wanderer in a new world. What matter though the streets
were squalid, and the men and women against whom he brushed were, for
the most part, poorly dressed and ill looking? He was free. Even his
identity was gone. Douglas Guest was dead, and with his past Douglas
Jesson had nothing to do.

He wandered on, asking no questions, perfectly content. The great city
expanded before him. Streets became wider, carriages were more
frequent, the faces of the people grew more cheerful. He laughed softly
to himself from sheer lightness of heart. From down a side street he
came into the Strand, and here, for the first time, he noticed that he
himself was attracting