of aspect in the half-light of the dawning, he again recalled the fact, which he had mentioned that night to Doctor Levillier, of people watching an invalid who had seen, at the precise moment of dissolution, the soul escaping furtively from its fleshy prison like a flame, which was immediately lost in the air.  Surely, wandering souls, if indeed there were such things, might still retain this faint semblance of a shape, a form.  And if so, they might perhaps occasionally conceive a fantastic attachment to a human being, and companion him silently as the dog companions his master.  He might have such a companion, whose nature he could not comprehend, whose object in seeking him out he could not guess.  Perhaps it felt affection toward him; perhaps, on the other hand, enmity.  A lover, or a spy—­it might be either.  Or it might have no definite purpose, but simply drift near him in the air, as some human beings drift feebly along together through life, because they have long ago loved each other, or thought each other useful, or fancied, in some moment of madness, that God meant them for each other.  It might be an aimless, dreary soul, unable to be gone from sheer dulness of purpose—­a soul without temperament, without character.

As this thought crossed Julian’s mind he happened to glance at the front of a shop on his left, and against the iron shutters the flame was dimly but distinctly outlined.  He stopped at once to look at it, but even as he stopped it was gone.  Then he sternly brought himself back from the vague regions of fancy, and was angry that he had permitted himself to wander in them like a child lost in the forest.  He bent down and patted Rip, and sought to wrench his mind from its wayward course, and to thrust it forcibly into its accustomed groove of healthy sanity.  Yet sanity seemed to become abruptly commonplace, a sort of whining crossing-sweeper, chattering untimely, meaningless phrases to him.  To divert himself entirely he paused beside a peripatetic coffee-stall, presided over by a grey-faced, prematurely old youth, with sharp features and the glancing eyes of poverty-stricken avarice.

“Give me a cup of coffee,” he said.

The youth clattered his wares in excited obedience.

While he was pouring out the steaming liquid there drifted down to Julian through the grey weariness of the morning a painted girl of the streets, crowned with a large hat, on which a forest of feathers waved in the weak and chilly breeze.  Julian glanced at her idly enough and she glanced back at him.  Horror, he thought, looked from her eyes as if from a window.  As she returned his gaze she hovered near him in the peculiar desultory way of such women, and Julian, glad of any distraction, offered her a cup of coffee.  She drew nearer and accepted it.

“And a bun, my dear,” she hinted to the sharp-featured youth.

“And a bun,” echoed Julian, seeing his doubtful pause of hesitation.