The dusk paled and paled. Soon one would catch the silver of up-turned leaves.
On the soft deep dust the treading feet of the travellers moved quietly. One walked with a light unevenness, a slight limp.
CHAPTER V
THE SPLENDID MORNING
"Listen," said Peter again; and some far off thing was faintly jarring the soft silence, on a crescendo note.
Rodney listened, and murmured, "Brute." He hated them more than Peter did. He was less wide-minded and less sweet-tempered. Peter had a gentle and not intolerant æsthetic aversion, Rodney a fervid moral indignation.
It came storming over the rims of twilight out of an unborn dawn, and the soft dust surged behind. Its eyes flamed, and lit the pale world. It was running to the city in the dim west; it was in a hurry; it would be there for breakfast. As it ran it played the opening bars of something of Tchaichowsky's.
Rodney and Peter leant over the low white wall and gazed into grey shivering gardens. So could they show aloof contempt; so could they elude the rioting dust.
The storming took a diminuendo note; it slackened to a throbbing murmur. The brute had stopped, and close to them. The brute was investigating itself.