Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/16

 Israel are shut, but the pulse of life still beats around them in boisterous measure. A variegated crowd of people surges here, talking, laughing, jesting: laborers who come in their grimy clothes after having received their pay; soldiers and loiterers; factory girls with yellow faces, their hair combed over their brows; prattling domestics vociferate around the water basin; women, with their pale babes in their arms, are standing at the doors of the houses, conversing in shrill voices; in the basement taverns the gaslight, subdued through the red curtains, already flickers, and here and there are heard the sounds of the accordion. The pulse of life is beating strong.

Eight o’clock. The bells are tolling over Prague. The proud harmonious tones fall upon this scene of animation. A sacred moment! Over this extinct sultry day, over this sea of red roofs, over this varied mass of spires, over this grey that is flooding the tangle of sweltering streets,—over all that