Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see its flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great muscles, and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head of a serpent.  It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-made thing.  It expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and remote from love—­or rather, the remorselessness which man had seen, lurking within man’s fate.  Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his march along the Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold.  He came to where, in the opening of the Underground railway, he could see the little forms of people moving, little orange and red lights glowing.  The sight arrested him by its warmth and motion.  Was it not all a dream?  That woman and her daughter, had they really come?  Had not Noel been but an apparition, her words a trick which his nerves had played him?  Then, too vividly again, he saw her face against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve of her hand plucking at her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified:  “Nollie!” No illusion, no deception!  The edifice of his life was in the dust.  And a queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he had thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing at her.  He staggered back from that vision, could not bear it, could not recognise this calamity.  With a sort of comfort, yet an aching sense of unreality, his mind flew to all those summer holidays spent in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his two girls; what sunsets, and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and insects they had watched together!  From their youthful companionship, their eagerness, their confidence in him, he had known so much warmth and pleasure.  If all those memories were true, surely this could not be true.  He felt suddenly that he must hurry back, go straight to Noel, tell her that she had been cruel to him, or assure himself that, for the moment, she had been insane:  His temper rose suddenly, took fire.  He felt anger against her, against every one he knew, against life itself.  Thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his thin black overcoat, he plunged into that narrow glowing tunnel of the station booking-office, which led back to the crowded streets.  But by the time he reached home his anger had evaporated; he felt nothing but utter lassitude.  It was nine o’clock, and the maids had cleared the dining table.  In despair Noel had gone up to her room.  He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his little piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so that Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music through uneasy dreams.  And there he stayed, till it became time for him to go forth to the Old Year’s Midnight Service.