think about in Wimblehurst. And after the ordinary overcast day, after
dull mornings, came twilight, and London lit up and became a thing of
white and yellow and red jewels of light and wonderful floods of golden
illumination and stupendous and unfathomable shadows--and there were
no longer any mean or shabby people--but a great mysterious movement of
unaccountable beings....

Always I was coming on the queerest new aspects. Late one Saturday night
I found myself one of a great slow-moving crowd between the blazing
shops and the flaring barrows in the Harrow Road; I got into
conversation with two bold-eyed girls, bought them boxes of chocolate,
made the acquaintance of father and mother and various younger brothers
and sisters, sat in a public-house hilariously with them all, standing
and being stood drinks, and left them in the small hours at the door
of "home," never to see them again. And once I was accosted on
the outskirts of a Salvation Army meeting in one of the parks by a
silk-hatted young man of eager and serious discourse, who argued against
scepticism with me, invited me home to tea into a clean and cheerful
family of brothers and sisters and friends, and there I spent
the evening singing hymns to the harmonium (which reminded me of
half-forgotten Chatham), and wishing all the sisters were not so
obviously engaged....

Then on the remote hill of this boundless city-world I found Ewart.

III

How well I remember the first morning, a bright Sunday morning in early
October, when I raided in upon Ewart! I found my old schoolfellow in
bed in a room over an oil-shop in a back street at the foot of Highgate