earth in its black eddies, and he felt himself swept along over a
heaving hissing surface, with wet boughs lashing out at him as he fled.
From one terrace to another he dropped to lower depths of buffeting
dripping darkness, till he found his hand on the gate-latch and swung to
the black lane below the wall. Thence on a run he wound to the tanners'
quarter by the river: a district commonly as foul-tongued as it was
ill-favoured, but tonight clean-purged of both evils by the vehement
sweep of the storm. Here he groped his way among slippery places and
past huddled out-buildings to the piles of the wharf. The rain was now
subdued to a noiseless vertical descent, through which he could hear the
tap of the river against the piles. Scarce knowing what he fled or
whither he was flying, he let himself down the steps and found the flat
of a boat's bottom underfoot. A boatman, distinguishable only as a black
bulk in the stern, steadied his descent with outstretched hand; then the
bow swung round, and after a labouring stroke or two they caught the
current and were swept down through the rushing darkness.



BOOK III. THE CHOICE.


The Vision touched him on the lips and said:
Hereafter thou shalt eat me in thy bread,
Drink me in all thy kisses, feel my hand
Steal 'twixt thy palm and Joy's, and see me stand
Watchful at every crossing of the ways,
The insatiate lover of thy nights and days.