Then I strove to rise up, but fell back again; a white light, empty of
all sights, broke upon me for a moment, and lo I behold, I was lying
in my familiar bed, the south-westerly gale rattling the Venetian
blinds and making their hold-fasts squeak.
I got up presently, and going to the window looked out on the winter
morning; the river was before me broad between outer bank and bank,
but it was nearly dead ebb, and there was a wide space of mud on each
side of the hurrying stream, driven on the faster as it seemed by the
push of the south-west wind. On the other side of the water the few
willow-trees left us by the Thames Conservancy looked doubtfully alive
against the bleak sky and the row of wretched-looking blue-slated
houses, although, by the way, the latter were the backs of a sort of
street of "villas" and not a slum; the road in front of the house was
sooty and muddy at once, and in the air was that sense of dirty
discomfort which one is never quit of in London. The morning was
harsh, too, and though the wind was from the south-west it was as cold
as a north wind; and yet amidst it all, I thought of the corner of the
next bight of the river which I could not quite see from where I was,
but over which one can see clear of houses and into Richmond Park,
looking like the open country; and dirty as the river was, and harsh
as was the January wind, they seemed to woo me toward the
country-side, where away from the miseries of the "Great Wen" I might
of my own will carry on a daydream of the friends I had made in the
dream of the night and against my will.
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