Since his flight from Bludston his life had been one sensuous trance.

His hungry young soul had been gorged with beauty--the beauty of fields and trees and rolling country, of still, quivering moons and starlit nights, of exultant freedom, of never-failing human sympathy.

He had a confused memory of everything.
They had passed through many towns as similar to Bludston as one factory chimney to another, and had plied their trade in many a mean street, so much the counterpart of Budge Street that he had watched a certain window or door with involuntary trepidation, until he realized that it was not Budge Street, that he was a happy alien to its squalor, that he was a butterfly, a thing of woods and hedgerows fluttering for an inconsequent moment in the gloom.

He came among them, none knew whence he was going, none knew whither.

He was conscious of being a creature of mystery.