Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/84

72 I went out for a walk into the Regent's Park, feeling as if I were away from the streets and the life-worn people there. Many happy hours were spent by me wandering whistling over the middle grass plateau (it seemed to me like a plateau), thinking of my work and, sometimes, of the dear woman to whom some day I should tell all of this; for she had come back to me now, and not quite what she had ever been before, more real because more gentle, more loving, more true, knowing what was in my heart and soul and having much in her own heart and soul that mine would be glad to know of. Often I watched the sun setting in the cloud banks, and once saw him in the dim, slatey, sky-layer, hanging like a blood-red spider, gradually covered with a sort of dusty smokiness and darkened till he was wrapped invisible from me.

I lived all the time on bread, with an occasional relish of fruit or a glass of milk.

I soon learnt my way about, at any rate in one great block that was between Regent's Park and the Thames by Charing Cross. I was very fond of wandering by night: especially to the top of Primrose Hill, to look out over the great city, and the rings of light closer to, as in a vestibule-court of an almost boundless palace-building: especially, too, I loved the populous streets like Oxford Street and the Strand.

One night I had wandered along Oxford Street past the Circus, and then turned down on the right into the block of buildings that is between Seven Dials and Regent Street; had wandered on and on, till I found myself in dim streets, in which every now and then shadows as of women moved with a certain inspiration of fear. I passed close to some of them, drawn as by some latent power of fascination on the ground and in them, but not looking at their faces: till at last, passing somewhat quickly into an alley, I met one face to face under a protruding shadowed lamp. For a moment I stood breathless, with my eyes in the mad wolfishness and glitter of hers, and then, like a lightning flash that fills the whole air, terror of her filled me quite. I leaped aside and then past her: plunged into a dark-covered way that was behind and beyond her, and