roar, and dust; the black smoke curled in the air; higher up the snowy and brilliant clouds, which the tall winds bore along; all were but the intricate and wondrous workings of a single monstrous personality; a rival in the universe who had absorbed and wrested from him his own divine dower.  Out of him; out of him, the power—­ the free, the fearless—­whirled in play, and drove the suns and stars in their orbits, and sped the earth through light and shadow.  Out of him; out of him; never to be reconquered; never to be regained.  The exultant laugh of the day; the flame of summer; the gigantic winds careering over the city; the far-off divine things filled him with unutterable despair.  What was he amid it all?  A spark decaying in its socket; a little hot dust clinging together.

He found himself in a small square; he sat down on a bench; his brain burning, his eyes unseeing.

“Oh! my, what’s he piping over?” jeered a grotesque voice, and a small figure disappeared, turning somersaults among the bushes.

“Poor young man!  Perhaps he is ill.  Are you not well, sir?” asked a sympathetic nurse.

He started up, brought to himself, and muttering something unintelligible, continued his journey through the city.  The terrible influence departed, and a new change came over him.  The laugh of the urchin rankled in his mind:  he hated notice:  there must be something absurd or out of the common in his appearance to invoke it.  He knew suddenly that there was a gulf between him and the people he lived among.  They were vivid, actual, suited to their places.  How he envied them!  Then the whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference.  He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him.  One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge.  Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ideas!  He delivered his letter; he was wearied out, and as he returned he noticed neither sky nor sunlight, and the hurrying multitudes were indifferent and without character.  He passed through them; his mind dull like theirs; a mere machine to guide rapid footsteps.

That evening, a clerk named Whittaker, a little his senior in the office, was struck by Harvey’s curious and delicate face.

“I say, Harvey,” he said, “how do you spend your evenings?”

Harvey flushed a little at the unwonted interest.

“I take long walks,” he said.

“Do you read much?”

“A little.”

“Do you go to the theatre?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Whew! what a queer fellow!  No clubs, classes, music-halls—­ anything of the sort, eh?”

“No,” said Harvey, a little bitterly, “I know nothing, nobody; I am always alone.”