He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had succeeded in this great adventure, things--that is, life--would never be quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of his journey. The first instalment was defined by that picture of the garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no possible harbour until the end. Off Ernest Henry started. He could see his father, there in the long distance, busied with his paper; he could see the nursery table, with bright-blue and red reels of cotton that nurse had left there; he could see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across, ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes the Eddystone, the table's other end; he was on the last stretch. Then suddenly he paused. He lifted his head, caught with his eye a pink, round cloud that sailed against the evening blue beyond the window, heard the harpist, heard his father turn and exclaim, as he saw him. He knew, as he stood there, that at last the moment had come. His friend had returned. All the room was buzzing with it. The dolls fell in a neglected heap, the train on the carpet, the fire behind the fender, the reels of cotton that were on the table--they all knew it. His friend had returned. His impulse was, there and then, to sit down. His friend was whispering: "Come along!... Come along!... Come along!" He knew that, on his surrender, his father would make sounds like, "Well, old man, tired, eh? Bed, I suggest." He knew that bed would follow. Then darkness, then his friend. For an instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is proper only to ostlers, he continued his march. He reached the wall. He caught his father's leg. He was raised on to his father's lap, was kissed, was for a moment triumphant; then suddenly burst into tears. "Why, old man, what's the matter?" But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his "Pilgrimage from this world to the next." CHAPTER III ANGELINA I