tterness.

"Yes--all right," he turned and melted into the darkness. She went
indoors, worn with a strange and bitter flame.

He crossed the fields towards the little town, which once more fumed its
lights under the night. The country ran away, rising on his right hand.
It was no longer a great bank of darkness. Lights twinkled freely here
and there, though forlornly, now that the war-time restrictions were
removed. It was no glitter of pre-war nights, pit-heads glittering
far-off with electricity. Neither was it the black gulf of the war
darkness: instead, this forlorn sporadic twinkling.

Everybody seemed to be out of doors. The hollow dark countryside
re-echoed like a shell with shouts and calls and excited voices.
Restlessness and nervous excitement, nervous hilarity were in the
air. There was a sense of electric surcharge everywhere, frictional, a
neurasthenic haste for excitement.

Every moment Aaron Sisson was greeted with Good-night--Good-night,
Aaron--Good-night, Mr. Sisson. People carrying parcels, children,
women, thronged home on the dark paths. They were all talking loudly,
declaiming loudly about what they could and could not get, and what this
or the other had lost.

When he got into the main street, the only street of shops, it was
crowded. There seemed to have been some violent but quiet contest, a
subdued fight, going on all the afternoon and evening: people struggling
to buy things, to get things. Money was spent like water, there was
a frenzy of money-spending. Though the necessities of life were in
abundance, still the people struggled in frenzy for cheese, sweets,
raisins, pork-stuff, even for flowers and holly, all of which were
scarce, and for toys and knick-knacks, which were sold out. There was a
wild grumbling, but a deep satisfaction in the fight, the struggle. The
same fight and the same satisfaction in the fight was witnessed whenever
a tram-car stopped, or when it heaved its way into sight. Then the
struggle to mount on board became desperate and savage, but stimulating.
Souls surcharged with hostility found now some outlet for their
feelings.

As he came near the little market-place he bethought himself of the
Christmas-tree candles. He did not intend to trouble himself. And yet,
when he glanced in passing into the sweet-shop window, and saw it bare
as a board, the very fact that he probably _could not_ buy the things
made him hesitate, and try.

"Have you got any Christmas-tree