Alexander sat up and looked about him.
The train was tearing on through the darkness.
All his companions in the day-coach were
either dozing or sleeping heavily,
and the murky lamps were turned low.
How came he here among all these dirty people?
Why was he going to London? What did it
mean--what was the answer? How could this
happen to a man who had lived through that
magical spring and summer, and who had felt
that the stars themselves were but flaming
particles in the far-away infinitudes of his love?
What had he done to lose it? How could
he endure the baseness of life without it?
And with every revolution of the wheels beneath
him, the unquiet quicksilver in his breast told
him that at midsummer he would be in London.
He remembered his last night there: the red
foggy darkness, the hungry crowds before
the theatres, the hand-organs, the feverish
rhythm of the blurred, crowded streets, and
the feeling of letting himself go with the
crowd. He shuddered and looked about him
at the poor unconscious companions of his
journey, unkempt and travel-stained, now
doubled in unlovely attitudes, who had come
to stand to him for the ugliness he had
brought into the world.
And those boys back there, beginning it
all just as he had begun it; he wished he
could promise them better luck. Ah, if one
could promise any one better luck, if one
could assure a single human being of happiness!
He had thought he could do so, once;
and it was thinking of that that he at last fell
asleep.
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