I thought of Elizabeth and the terrified look in her eyes; I heard a city clock strike ten, and, an hour later, one, and it was long before I remembered that ten was midnight; my last resolve was to try to forget my former life and fling myself with all my power into the new. At last I fell asleep, to be awakened by the sun shining into my eyes along a canyon that stretched between the high buildings as far as I could see. CHAPTER VII HIDDEN THINGS It was not until a week had passed that the first stimulus of the amazing life into which I had been plunged abated, leaving me a prey to melancholy reflections. The memory of Esther, which I had tried so hard to put away, began to recur incessantly. I felt shut off from humanity, a survival from a generation whose memory, even, had become legendary. They seemed to understand my feelings, although they could not know their cause, and tried to keep me from brooding. By tacit understanding no references were made to my past. They accepted me as a stranger, and yet there was the same latent suspicion on Elizabeth’s part. And I could not help seeing that some heavy grief or apprehension hung over them. And I felt that I was an intruder upon it. At night I would hear David pacing his room for hours, and sometimes a groan would break from his lips. He gave me to understand that the summons to appear before the Council might be delayed for days or weeks. It was always presented unexpectedly, and always peremptory, he said. During the week following my arrival at the Strangers’ House I never went out alone. Whenever I made the suggestion, David either volunteered to accompany me or found some excuse to detain me. In particular, he requested me to stay within doors during the four hours when he was at the Bureau, in the morning. Finally I became almost exasperated. “You have told me that I am free,” I protested. “And you are free, Arnold,” he answered. “It is for your own sake that I make this request of you. There are hidden things, shadows against the sunlight of our civilization, and transitory, I hope, which you would hardly understand. You must learn them by degrees, Arnold. To me they have seemed necessary in this transitional epoch; but they are hard, Arnold; hard to endure.” And he sighed in so melancholy a fashion that I suspected one of those shadows rested on his own home. Yes, there were hidden things, and I got no nearer the heart of them, although I had hints as to their nature. For instance, there was the Animal Vivisection Bureau. I wondered why David spoke of the Animal Vivisection Bureau, and not of the Vivisection Bureau.