not his. Their door was one he could not enter. And suddenly the naked empty desolation filled his life again, and he was walking on beneath the timeless sky, and had no wall at which to hurl his strength, no door to enter by, and no purpose for the furious unemployment of his soul. And now the worm was eating at his heart again. He felt the slow interminable waste and wear of grey time all about him and his life was passing in the darkness, and all the time a voice kept saying: “Why? Why am I here now? And where shall I go?”
When Eugene got out into the High Street after dinner, the dark air would be thronging with the music of great bells, and there would be a smell of fog and smoke and old October in the air, the premonitory thrill and menace of some intolerable and nameless joy. Often at night, the visage of the sky would by some magic be released from the thick greyness that had covered it by day, and would shine forth barely, blazing with flashing and magnificent stars.
And, as the old bells thronged through the smoky air, the students would be passing along the street, singly or in groups of two or three, briskly, and with the eager haste that told of meetings to come, appointments to be kept, the expectation of some good fortune, happiness, or pleasure toward which they hurried on.
The soft glow of lights would shine from the ancient windows of the colleges, and one could hear the faint sounds of voices, laughter, sometimes music.
Then Eugene would go to different pubs and drink until the closing time. Sometimes the proctors would come into a pub where he was drinking, speak amicably to everyone, and in a moment more go out again.
Somehow he always hoped that they would take him for a student. He could see them stepping up to him, as he stood there at the bar, saying courteously, yet gravely and sternly:
“Your name and college, sir?”
Then he could see the look of astonished disbelief on their grim red faces when he told them he was not a student, and at last, when he had convinced them, he could hear their crestfallen muttered-out apologies, and would graciously excuse them.
But the proctors never spoke to him, and the bar-man, seeing him look at them as they went out one night, misunderstood the look and laughed with cheerful reassurance:
