It ought, therefore, to have done him good; but the experience was too wild and sudden and strange; for this was the very first time in all his life when he had wished to keep himself to himself, under circumstances which apparently made it impossible. Nor did he yet realize that this was but the preliminary stage--the eruption stage--the stage of concentrated effort outwardly expressed, in which it sought to establish itself in his mind and consciousness as a fixed part of a pervasive and expansive personality, destined to go much further in the world than he had ever yet dreamed. Being a temperamental halo--pale at first, rather uncertain of itself and of its relations to the society into which it was born, it was not yet all that it would wish to be; it had not yet made itself at home. But even in the first few hours of its existence it fluctuated, waxing and waning in response to the spirit within; and when the time came for him to go out into the street and face the world, when for a few uncomfortable moments he stood hesitating by the hat-stand, it almost died out. But this would have been to deny himself entirely; and this he could not do. He put on his overcoat; then with a wavering mind asked himself what hat he should wear with it--with IT, that is to say. It seemed almost to savour of irreverence that he should wear a hat at all. But unwilling to make himself more noticeable than necessary, he finally selected one. Then, before putting the hat on, he went upstairs, to have a last look at himself. It was then--he saw, or hoped--almost undetectable; but when he put on his hat--a black one--it once more leapt into local prominence, disappointing his hope that what covered his head might have covered that also. On the contrary, his hat failing to contain it, it seemed rather to contain his hat. As he went forth, the undemonstrative Mrs. James looked out at him from her window. She had not detected, she did not detect now, the thing he had striven to conceal: but his fluttered manner and his talking to her with his back to the light had made her suspicious: ‘It’s my belief he’s been having a night out,’ she remarked to herself as she watched him go. And though she owned it was no concern of hers, she allowed the suspicion to entertain her all the rest of the day; and when in the afternoon a rather agitated lady called, with a bruised face, wishing urgently to see him or to know where he was to be found, but refusing to disclose her name, she did her best for his morals by giving the address which in another twenty-four hours would be his; where, she explained pointedly, he had gone with his wife and family to have a little rest and be away from people. And while Mrs. James was thus providing adventure for him, according to the light that was in her, he by reason of the light that was not in him but on him, was having adventures of his own.