What is it, Clifton ?" "Your chauffeur would like to know, what time you will have the car ?" "Directly after dinner." Twenty minutes later, he was turning through the scrolled iron gates into the road for London.

It was falling dark; and in the tremulous sky clouds were piled up, and drifted here and there with a sort of endless lack of purpose.

No direction seemed to have been decreed unto their wings.

They had met together in the firmament like a flock of giant magpies crossing and re-crossing each others' flight.

The smell of rain was in the air.