'You look hot,' said Margaret-Juliet, with cruel distinctness, just as
he was trying to throw the most intense pathos into the words, ''tis
not the lark, it is the nightingale!' Perhaps dreaming nonsense is also a subject for the inquiries of
psychology. At the moment the poor man's imaginary sufferings were
positively frightful, and he awoke with a gasp. He had always secretly
dreaded growing fat, he had always felt a horror of anything like
singing or speaking in public, and the only thing in the world he
really feared was the possibility of being ridiculous in Margaret's
eyes. Of course the ingenious demon of his dreams found a way of
applying all these three torments at once, and it was like being saved
from sudden death to wake up in the dark and smell the stale smoke of
the pipe he had enjoyed before putting out his light.
Then he fell asleep again and did not awake till morning, being
naturally a very good sleeper. It was raining when he got up, and he
looked out disconsolately upon the dull street. It seemed to him that
if it was going to rain in Paris he might as well go back to London,
where he had plenty to do, and he began to consider which train he
should take, revolving the advantages and disadvantages of reaching
London early in the evening or late at night. He knew the different
time-tables by heart.
But it stopped raining while he was dressing, and the sun came out, and
a bird began to sing somewhere at a window high above the street, and
it was suddenly spring again. It was a great thing to be alone in
spring. If he went back to London he must see people he knew, and dine
with people he hardly knew at all, and be asked out by others whom he
had not even met, because he was the distinguished critic, flattered
and feared and asked to dinner by everybody who had a seventh cousin in
danger of literary judgment. He belonged to the flock of dramatic lions
and must herd with them, eat with them and roar with them, for the
greater glory of London society and his native country generally. Under
ordinary circumstances such an existence was bearable and at times
delightful, but just now he wanted to roar in the wilderness and assert
his leonine right of roaming in desolate places not less than two
geographical degrees east of Pall Mall.
He went out at last and strolled towards the bridge, and across it and
much farther, but not aimlessly, for though he did not always take the
shortest way, he kept mainly in the same direction till he came to the
Avenue Hoche.