that less distinctly I had felt this before many times.  In the old times, night and the starlight had an effect of intimate reality the daytime did not possess.  The daytime—­as one saw it in towns and populous places—­had hold of one, no doubt, but only as an uproar might, it was distracting, conflicting, insistent.  Darkness veiled the more salient aspects of those agglomerations of human absurdity, and one could exist—­one could imagine.

I had a queer illusion that night, that Nettie and her lover were close at hand, that suddenly I should come on them.  I have already told how I went through the dusk seeking them in every couple that drew near.  And I dropped asleep at last in an unfamiliar bedroom hung with gaudily decorated texts, cursing myself for having wasted a day.

Section 3

I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in quick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues.  After failing to find any young couple that corresponded to young Verrall and Nettie, I presently discovered an unsatisfactory quartette of couples.

Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; with regard to none of them was there conviction.  They had all arrived either on Wednesday or Thursday.  Two couples were still in occupation of their rooms, but neither of these were at home.  Late in the afternoon I reduced my list by eliminating a young man in drab, with side whiskers and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of thirty or more, of consciously ladylike type.  I was disgusted at the sight of them; the other two young people had gone for a long walk, and though I watched their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shone out above, sharing and mingling in an unusually splendid sunset, I missed them.  Then I discovered them dining at a separate table in the bow window, with red-shaded candles between them, peering out ever and again at this splendor that was neither night nor day.  The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and pretty to me—­pretty enough to enrage me,—­she had well shaped arms and white, well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and the fair hair about her ears was full of subtle delights; but she was not Nettie, and the happy man with her was that odd degenerate type our old aristocracy produced with such odd frequency, chinless, large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, and a neck that had demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar.  I stood outside in the meteor’s livid light, hating them and cursing them for having delayed me so long.  I stood until it was evident they remarked me, a black shape of envy, silhouetted against the glare.

That finished Shaphambury.  The question I now had to debate was which of the remaining couples I had to pursue.

I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, and muttering to myself, because there was something in that luminous wonderfulness that touched one’s brain, and made one feel a little light-headed.