Then, suddenly all that dream creature had vanished; he was on his feet,
with a thumping heart, speaking.
Soon he had no tremors, only a dim consciousness that his words sounded
strange, and a queer icy pleasure in flinging them out into the silence.
Round him there seemed no longer men, only mouths and eyes. And he had
enjoyment in the feeling that with these words of his he was holding
those hungry mouths and eyes dumb and unmoving. Then he knew that he
had reached the end of what he had to say, and sat down, remaining
motionless in the centre of a various sound; staring at the back of the
head in front of him, with his hands clasped round his knee. And soon,
when that little faraway voice was once more speaking, he took his hat,
and glancing neither to right nor left, went out.
Instead of the sensation of relief and wild elation which fills the
heart of those who have taken the first plunge, Miltoun had nothing
in his deep dark well but the waters of bitterness. In truth, with the
delivery of that speech he had but parted with what had been a sort of
anodyne to suffering. He had only put the fine point on his conviction,
of how vain was his career now that he could not share it with Audrey
Noel. He walked slowly towards the Temple, along the riverside, where
the lamps were paling into nothingness before that daily celebration of
Divinity, the meeting of dark and light.
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