I remember getting down at Aldgate Pump, and walking through that dead belt of the City, which, lying between east and west, is alive like a beehive by day and silent and deserted by night.
I remember seeing an old man, with a face like a rat's, picking up cigar-ends from the gutters before the dark Banks, and then a flock of sheep bleating before a barking dog as they were driven through the echoing streets from the river-side towards the slaughter-houses near Smithfield Market.
I remember that when I came to St. Paul's the precincts of the cathedral were very quiet and the big clock was striking nine. But on Ludgate Hill the traffic was thick, and when I reached Fleet Street crowds of people were standing in front of the newspaper offices, reading large placards in written characters which were pasted on the windows.
I remember that I did not look at these placards, thinking their news was nothing to me, who had not seen a newspaper for months and for whom the world was now eclipsed, but that as I stepped round one of the crowds, which extended to the middle of the street, somebody said:
"He has landed at Southampton, it seems."
I remember that when I reached Charing Cross I found myself on the fringe of another and much larger crowd, and that the people, who seemed to be waiting for somebody and were chatting with a noise like the crackling of thorns under a pot, were saying:
"His train is fifty minutes late, so we've half an hour to wait yet."
Then I remember that walking at random round St Martin's Church into Leicester Square I came upon three "public women" who were swinging along with a high step and laughing loudly, and that one of them was Angela, and that she stopped on seeing me and cried:
"Hello! Here I am again, you see! Giovanni's dead, and I don't care a damn!"
I remember that she said something else—it was about Sister Mildred, but my mind did not take it in—and at the next moment she left me, and I heard her laughter once more as she swept round the corner.