They were on the heath now, and the smoke of London hung in the wintry
air beyond and below them. The sun was already beginning to wear the
aspect of a traveller on the point of departure for a journey. His once
golden face was sinister with that blood-red hue which it so often
assumes on winter afternoons, and which seems to set it in a place more
than usually remote, more than usually distant from our world, and in a
clime that is sad and strange. Winds danced over the heath like young
witches. The horses, whipped by the more intense cold, pulled hard
against the bit, and made the coachman's arms ache. The doctor looked
away for a moment at the vapours that began to clothe the afternoon in
the hollows and depressions of the landscape, and at the sun, whose
gathering change of aspect smote on his imagination as something akin to
the change that falls over the faces of men towards that hour when the
sun of their glory makes ready for its setting. Still keeping his glance
on that sad red sun in its nest of radiating vapours, he said, in a
withdrawn voice:
"We must hate nothing except the hatefulness of sin in ourselves and in
others."
Cuckoo listened as to the voice of some one on a throne, and tears that
she could not fully understand rose in her eyes.
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