III
There had come to him one of those agonies of loneliness that no argument, no reasoning can destroy.
The absence of any letter from Rachel seemed to show that she had abandoned him. In all this vast thickly peopled world there was now no one to whom his presence or absence, his fortunes or disasters mattered. The snowstorm gathered him into its folds; the snow fell against his mouth, his eyes, and before him, behind him, around him there was a world deserted of man, houses blind and without life.
The snow might fall now to the end of time. It would creep up and up, falling from the heavens, rising from the earth, swallowing all creation—the end of the world.
He pressed into the park and there under the trees stretching like gallows against the throttling sky temptation to give it all up, to go under and have done with it all, leapt, hot and fierce, upon him. Mrs. Pont and the others were waiting for him. They would be good to him. The Upper World would not hear nor see nor think of his disasters, and slowly, with the others, life would recede, he would crumble and decay and cease to care, and death would come soon enough.
Then the wind smote his face and tore at his coat: the snow died away, beyond the black bare trees a very faint yellow bar threaded the thick grey—promise that the storm was at an end.
Suddenly with the cessation of the storm the long field of white seemed good and restful, and beyond the park the houses showed light in their windows.
The yellow spread through the sky, and stars, very slowly, came and the wind died away.
Courage filled him. Rachel might never come or write or care, but he would make the thought of her the one true thing in his heart, and with that he would do battle so long as he could.
Christopher and Miss Rand ... he thought of them as he trudged his way home—and when he saw the white silence of Saxton Square and the golden sky breaking above its peace and quiet he thought that, for a time longer, he would keep his place and hold his own.