But now it began to get light. The stillness of the night was broken, my solitude was disturbed.
Hosts of sparrows began to congregate upon the window sills, and their busy twittering filled the air. First one steam-whistle blew in the distance, then another nearer by, then another, and finally a chorus of them: bells began to ring, wagons rattled over the pavement, the shrill whoo-hoop of the milk-man resounded through the streets. The clatter of footsteps became audible upon the sidewalk.
People began to walk abroad. The sky turned from black to gray, from gray to blue. Shutters were banged, doors slammed, windows thrown open: housemaids with brooms and buckets appeared upon the stoops. Dawn had arrived from across the Ocean with the smell of the sea-breeze still clinging to her skirts. The city was waking to its feverish multifarious life.—And the result was that I forgot myself—was penetrated and exalted by that vague tremulous exhilaration which always accompanies the first breath of morning. I expanded my lungs and inhaled the fresh air and felt a glow of warmth and animation shoot through my limbs.
“Ah,” I cried, “a truce to the blue devils! I will go home and take up my regular life again, just as though this interruption had not occurred.”
I hurried back to our lodgings. Merivale was already up and dressed, smoking a cigarette over the newspaper.
“Hail!” I exclaimed. “I am glad to see you out of bed so early!”
“I have not been abed since you left,” he answered.
“Thinking about you—about what can be done to make a man of you.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that. I’m all right now. I sha’n’. play the fool again, I promise you. I propose that we sink the last four-and-twenty hours into eternal oblivion. What do you say?”
“Good! Let’s begin at the first cause. Where’s the manuscript? We’ll set fire to it, and agree to believe that it never really existed.”
“No,” said Merivale, “I wouldn’t set fire to it—at least not till it is manifest whether your present mood is merely a reaction from your late one, or whether it is going to last. I will dispose of the manuscript—see.”
He found it on the table, opened the double cover of the box, restored the papers to the place they had occupied formerly, and locked the box up in the closet of his writing-desk.