to the same depth. He thought as he fell asleep of Blanche and Cloom.
Life had ugly, unthought-of things in it, but, thinking of her steady
radiance, he could not believe that any fate would dare to dim its
lustre.

Blanche sat long at the window of her bedroom that evening, her ashen
fair hair about her shoulders and her brush idle in her hand. As it was
Sunday and she had no engagement, she was going to bed early, so early
that it was still sunset-light.

She stood at the open window of the bedroom, staring with unseeing eyes;
her thoughts were revolving round her own problems, but gradually the
sights and sounds without won her to notice of them. The back windows of
the house looked on to other house-backs that formed a square well,
wherein smaller, much lower roofs and flat expanses of ribbed leads and
stable yards all huddled together in soft blue shadow. Only an
occasional chimney-pot, higher than its fellows, made a note of glowing
orange where it pierced the slant of the evening sun: To Blanche's left
there showed a pale gleam from the Thames between the house-backs of
brownish-grey brick; to her right roof-tops and fantastic cowls were
patterned in a flat purple tone against the luminous sky. In the eaves
the sparrows were chirping shrilly; one flew downwards so swiftly
between Blanche's eyes and the sky that his little body seemed nothing
but a dark blot with a flickering upon either side of it. The sight
caught at her memory, and she had a quick vision of a day when she had
lain upon a sloping cliff and watched the gulls wheel far above her, the
light of the setting sun making their breasts and the underneath of
their wings flash like silver. A smaller bird had darted past, and then,
as now, she had noted the curious effect of the solid little body
flanked by that flickering which meant wings invisible through their own