He stretched himself stiff and tense as he lay there, while like an aerial landscape, luminous and yet minutely distinct, his vision of things gathered, clarified, mounted up, as if out of a transparent sea.

“The stream of life is made of little things,” he said to himself. “To forget the disgusting ones and fill yourself with the lovely ones⁠ ⁠… that’s the secret. What a fool I was to try and make my soul into a round, hard crystal! It’s a lake⁠ ⁠… that’s what it is⁠ ⁠… with a stream of shadows drifting over it⁠ ⁠… like so many leaves!”

Instinctively he avoided any definite thought of Urquhart’s cheque and of the morrow’s supper. But they were both there. They were like a dull throbbing at the back of his closed eyes.