"Out?" I repeated, and he leapt to his feet and gave himself a
joyful shake, and then stood on the hearth-rug in front of me,
swaying slowly his great brush of a tail and poising his head at an
intelligent angle. I got up, felt for my latch-key, and went into
the hall. Nous waited impatiently while I put on my hat and
overcoat, and then we went out together. The night was cold, wet,
and foggy. It was late in November, and a light mist veiled the end
of each black, deserted street.

I took no heed of anything, neither the atmosphere round me nor the
direction in which my feet carried me. I was wrapped up in a maze of
thoughts, and there was not a decently pleasant one in the whole
lot.

They were warmed and brightened every now and then as a form that I
loved glided amongst them, but even that form dragged after it a
chain of painful, fettering considerations, and the gleams of light
that it threw round it were only like those weak, pallid flashes of
sun that flit through the clouds of thunder and storm in a
hurricane.




CHAPTER II.


The next morning when I came down to breakfast it was late, and my
father had already withdrawn to his own library. I had missed again