Page:Hieroglyphics.pdf/21

 be thinking of Ulysses or of Keats at the moment, and the interruption may annoy you, but it will do so no longer when you reflect that a burning anxiety as to the running of Bolter is for many thousands the symbol—and the only possible symbol—of the Doom of Troy and the wandering fields of foam, and the Isle of Calypso, and the "strange surmise" of Pizarro and all his men.

But here is the evening-paper in question. Yes, the colour is, perhaps, a little sickly. A kind of pinky green, it seems, doesn't it? But it forced itself on my notice in the most extraordinary manner, and I expect you will have to admit, when you have heard the story, that some Powers were at work. Well, I was walking up and down the room, just as it was getting dusk, and every now and then I stopped and looked out of the window. Yes, I was making phrases as usual, and thinking of a new story in the middle of the old one: hence the quarter-deck exercise. I daresay you have remarked that I do not keep my window in a very brilliant condition, and the air this evening, you will remember, was rather misty—October, I always think, wears a peculiar dim grace