Page:In the days of the comet.djvu/102

 another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of my humiliated self.

And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and baffled, passionate desire.

2

As Ii came down the hill from Clayton Crest--for my shilling and a penny only permitted my travelling by train as far as Two-Mile Stone, and thence I had to walk over the hill--I remember very vividly a little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday evening loafers. He was a short man, bald, with a little fair curly beard and hair, and watery blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end of the world drew near.

I think that is the first time I heard anyone link the comet with the end of the world. He had got that jumbled up with international politics and prophecies from the Book of Daniel.

I stopped to hear him only for a moment or so. I do not think I should have halted at