By the time he reached them he was nearly knee deep, and was
in a far from philanthropic frame of mind. The solitude of
the little streets was as strange as their white obstruction,
and before he had ploughed his way much further he was convinced
that he had taken a wrong turning, and fallen upon some formless
suburb unvisited before. There was no light in any of the low,
dark houses; no light in anything but the blank emphatic snow.
He was modern and morbid; hellish isolation hit and held him suddenly;
anything human would have relieved the strain, if it had been only
the leap of a garotter. Then the tender human touch came indeed;
for another snowball struck him, and made a star on his back.
He turned with fierce joy, and ran after a boy escaping;
ran with dizzy and violent speed, he knew not for how long.
He wanted the boy; he did not know whether he loved or hated him.
He wanted humanity; he did not know whether he loved or hated it.
As he ran he realized that the landscape around him was changing
in shape though not in colour. The houses seemed to dwindle and
disappear in hills of snow as if buried; the snow seemed to rise
in tattered outlines of crag and cliff and crest, but he thought
nothing of all these impossibilities until the boy turned to bay.
When he did he saw the child was queerly beautiful, with gold
red hair, and a face as serious as complete happiness.
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