IX
S
pring
had swept through the Black Country once more, whipping the smoke from the great chimneys, causing the drab roofs to glisten silver with rain, coaxing out the early flowers in sudden fitful drenches of sunshine. It was May once more and I was as restless as the season itself. Now my heart reached out after things I did not know and like a restless animal I could not settle anywhere. And suddenly life seemed to me like a curious comedy, despite its stretches of grey, its depths of black. They all passed away, if one waited, and then life was just a comic little puppet-dance where little mattered in the end and where sadness and gladness were but two movements of the same drunken jig!
Tom came to me in the garden, his steps slow and his face grave and grey. Yes, a grey tinge h
