Sleep-walkers seldom come to damage until they awake; and Rob sped on, taking crossings without a halt; deaf to the shouts of cabmen, blind to their gesticulations. When you have done Oxford¹ Circus you can do anything; but he was not even brought to himself there, though it is all savage² lands in twenty square yards. For a time he saw nothing but that scene in Simms's chambers³, which had been photographed on his brain. The light of his life had suddenly been turned out, leaving him only the last thing he saw to think about.

 

By and by he was walking more slowly, laughing at himself. Since he met Mary Abinger she had lived so much in his mind that he had not dared to think of losing her. He had only given himself fits of despondency for the pleasure of dispelling⁴ them. Now all at once he saw without prejudice the Rob Angus who had made up his mind to carry off this prize, and he cut such a poor figure that he smiled grimly at it. He realised as a humorous conception that this uncouth⁵ young man who was himself must have fancied that he was, on the whole, less unworthy of Miss Abinger than were most of the young men she was likely to meet. With the exaggerated humility⁷ that comes occasionally to men in his condition, without, however, feeling sufficiently⁸ at home to remain long, he felt that there was everything in Simms a girl could find lovable, and nothing in himself. He was so terribly open that any one could understand him, while Simms was such an enigma⁹ as a girl would love to read. His own clumsiness contrasted as

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