Flames

e. The dawn was indeed just breaking, ever so wearily. A strong wind came up with it over the housetops, and Victoria Street looked dreary in the faint, dusky, grey light, which grew as slowly in

k carpet. And all his senses began to come out of their bondage and to renew their normal sanity. Only now did Julian realize how strenuous that bondage had been, a veritable slavery of the soul. Such a slavery could surely only have been possible within the four walls of a building. An artificial environment must be necessary to such an artificial condition of feeling. For Julian now gradua

enjoyment of all the things in the scheme of the earth. What a trick it had played on Julian and on Valentine. What a trick! And as this idea struck into Julian's mind he found himself on the pavement by the chemist's shop that i

end a mess

of your boys, if the one I m

uneasily sleeping, his chin nestling wearily among the medals which his exem

d. "Here's a gentleman

stared upon Julian with his big brown ey

d," he remarked airily, beginning to search for his

tell you that you were wrong. T

o his pocket and pr

ing for your mi

and, as Julian walke

fault, sir; it

bonnet, braided with rags, viciously glittering here and there with the stray bugles which survived from some bygone era of comparative respectability. Her penetrating snores denoted that she was oblivious of the lounging approach of the policeman, whose blue and burly form was visible in the extreme distance. Julian stopped to observe her reflectively. His eye, which loved the grotesque, was pleased by the bedragglement of her attitude, by the flat foot, in its bursting boot, which protrud

again, bent his left arm forcibly, and with his right hand felt the hard lump of muscle, that sprang up like a ball of iron under his coat sleeve. And as he felt it he cursed himself for the greatest of all fools. Thin, meagre little men of the town, tea-party men whose thoughts were ever on their ties and their moustaches, no doubt gave themselves up readily to disturbances of the nerves. But Julian had always prided himself on being an athlete, able to hold his own in the world by mere muscular force, if need be. He had found it possible to de

that night to Doctor Levillier, of people watching an invalid who had seen, at the precise moment of dissolution, the soul escaping furtively from its fleshy prison like a flame, which was immediately lost in the air. Surely, wandering souls, if indeed there were such things, might still retain this faint semblance of a shape, a form. And if so, they might perhaps occasionally conceive a fantastic attachment to a human being, and companion him silently as the dog companions his master. He might have such a companion, whose nature he could not comprehend, whose objec

ons of fancy, and was angry that he had permitted himself to wander in them like a child lost in the forest. He bent down and patted Rip, and sought to wrench his mind from its wayward course, and to thrust it forcibly into its accustomed groove of healthy sanity. Yet sanity seemed to become abru

cup of coff

ed his wares in e

forest of feathers waved in the weak and chilly breeze. Julian glanced at her idly enough and she glanced back at him. Horror, he thought, looked from her eyes as if from a window. As

" she hinted to the

lian, seeing his doubt

he kerb. The lady's curious and almost thrilling expression, which had seemed to beacon from some height of her soul some exceptional and drear

she remarked casually at length, in the suffocated voice of

k so?" sa

e so! Ask me another as

from the thick coffee-cup th

lf?" he said. "Why are

uspicious glance upon him. Then t

home," she said. "

f humanity to distract his mind, and thought of her as a strange female David of the stree

nd why," the

violently, as a dog j

her cup?"

gain rejoined. She shook her he

e said, reverting again

ings as don't do

y into your private affairs,

ht she, too, had passed through some unwonted experience, which h

he fear seemed to grow like a weed. Tears followed, rolli

rmured lamentably

matter?" s

rsistence of weak obstinacy, and continued vague

he had secured. Behind the youth's head it seemed to Julian that the phantom flame hung trembling, as if blown by the light wind of the morni

k th

rying abruptly, as if her tears we

e said jerkily. "Wh

ps are hung up. Don

m, and she now dropped her cup

sharp-featured youth. "Yo

rotest, the lady violen

and recoiled

terically. "Le-go, I say. I can

you," said Julian, asto

y repeated

o, let

an, that she seemed to be promenading backwards. And as she went she uttered deplorable wailing sounds, which gradually increased in volume. Apparently she considered that her life had been in imminent da

wearily at Julian from the mid

e ejaculated. "Good ayngels

d him and

perceive it against the grey face of a house, against the trunk of a tree, the dark green of a seat.

y at the foot of the bed, and had a moment of shooting wonder that the little dog was so completely comfortable with him. T

gs had puzzled him wi

e and it was dark; yet he could see. And the lady's feathers grew like the beanstalk of Jack the Giant-killer towards heaven and the land of ogres. Then Julian climbed up and up till he reached the top of the ladder. And it seemed to him that

ar the sharp-featured youth

he motto o