Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/53

41 I remember, the last night, going in to Mother McCarthy to get my hat from the cupboard—how I came along the dark passage: opened the door, with Gordon (the monitor) under the gas, leaning against the iron-work of Armstrong's bed, reading a book and biting his nails: went on to by my bed; threw the hat on to it: turned to the opened window and looked out—through the branches of two of the dark deep trees, into the quad, all there in the moonlight with the shadowed houses and, beyond, the opened heaven paley blue, lit with some self-containing radiance.

And a feeling of soft peace grew in me, something which was unspeakable and which could not be left, to turn round to the bright gas-light, and the bedded, jugged room and the fellows; so that the thought of them left me, trailing and fading away as some half-pulsing sort of tentacle in a dream, and I remained with the fulness of that soft peace unspeakable: until there was a start, my attention taken backward, a book snapped up, and I knew the butler had been in and put out the gas.

I went from the window into the space between the two beds, and undressed in silence, thinking.