He felt as though he were tightening his muscles for a plunge into very treacherous waters. All manner of unknown voices seemed calling to him out of this warm Spring air; mocking voices, beguiling voices, insidious voices⁠—voices that threatened unguessed-at disturbances to that underground life of his which was like a cherished vice. It was not as though he heard the tones of these voices so that he could have recognized them again. It was as though a wavering crowd of featureless human figures on the further side of some thick opaque latticework were conferring together in conspiring awareness of his immediate appearance among them!

The atmosphere was cooler when they came out of the church. Its taste was the taste of an air that has been blown over leagues and leagues of green stalks full of chilly sap. It made Solent think of water-buttercups in windy ponds, and the splash of moorhens over dark gurgling weirs.