ning and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. At
first his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade at
Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of the
sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality. And
then the gap filled, and he began to comprehend his position.

It was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been in the Silent Rooms.
At least he had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some way the
owner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess
him. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, set
resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his
murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this
unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was
convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! "I do not
understand," he cried. "I do not understand!"

He had slipped out between the contending parties into this liberty of
the twilight. What would happen next? What was happening? He figured the
red-clad men as busily hunting him, driving the black-badged
revolutionists before them.

At any rate chance had given him a breathing space. He could lurk
unchallenged by the passers-by, and watch the course of things. His eye
followed up the intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and it
came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there the sun was
rising, and the world was lit and glowing with the old familiar light of
day. In a little while he had recovered his breath. His clothing had
already dried upon him from the snow.

He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
accosted by no one--a dark figure among dark figures--the coveted man out
of the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of the world. Wherever
there were lights or dense crowds, or exceptional excitement, he was
afraid of recognition, and watched and turned back or went up and down by
the middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at a lower or
higher level. And though he came on no more fighting, the whole city
stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of
men that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most
part they were men, and they carried what he judged were weapons. It
seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter of
the city fro