TIME PASSESdisappear. And so, nosing, rubbing, they went to thewindow on the staircase, to the servants’ bedrooms, tothe boxes in the attics; descending, blanched the appleson the dining-room table, fumbled the petals of roses,tried the picture on the easel, brushed the mat andblew a little sand along the floor. At length, desisting,all ceased together, gathered together, all sighed to-gether; all together gave off an aimless gust of lamen-tation to which some door in the kitchen replied;swung wide; admitted nothing; and slammed to.

[Here Mr. Carmichael, who was reading Virgil,blew out his candle. It was past midnight.]3

But what after all is one night? A short space, especiallywhen the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a birdsings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like aturning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, how-ever, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack ofthem in store and deals them equally, evenly, withindefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken.Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of bright-ness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take onthe flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of coolcathedral caves where gold letters on marble pagesdescribe death in battle and how bones bleach andburn far away in Indian sands. The autumn treesgleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvestmoons, the light which mellows the energy of labour,and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lappingblue to the shore.

It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence149
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