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Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

The ground beneath his feet was uncertain, thick with a kind of turf, no longer the powderlike dust of the pathway. Perhaps he had strayed from the road. Preoccupied with his reverie, he had now not the smallest notion of how far he had wandered in the dark or how long he had been walking. It was as though he had entered a world of time-­out or a realm of dream, of which, undreamlike, the evidences were tangible enough—the fog, the constantly changing dark and light, the earth beneath his feet—all but the obscure figures which seemed continually to loom ahead of him in his path. He resisted an impulse to stop and call out: “Who’s there!” as the coast guardsman had done last night. He felt the wet hurrying night on his cheek; flecks of damp blew across his forehead and eyes. It was time to turn back before he became irrevocably lost. Yet still he felt impelled to go on. As he stumbled over the uneven ground, he gazed into the fog above to discover from which part of the sky the moon shone. Though light of a kind swirled thickly all around him, he could see nothing.

How much had it been Ethel he had fallen in love with, how much had it been a desire to find a place in the world and be the man for a woman like Ethel Cameron? The image of himself as he saw it reflected in her—it appealed strongly to him and he loved her for it. In any case they had fallen in love, and it was to be a very long time before they would question its meaning. The question, indeed, had only been raised this week, after ten years of marriage—but with a raw violence he doubted he would ever forget or recover from, an emphasis of guilt he could not but accept as his own.

The sea was loud. He supposed the density of the atmosphere and the fog itself brought the noisy beach nearer, though such a night as this should rather have muffled or softened (it seemed to him who knew nothing of these things) than augmented the sound. Dampness blew into his face as if it were actual spray from the breakers; and this too, no doubt, was the tangible and fleeing mist.