As he dipped his pen in the ink a sudden apprehension of failure surprised him. He dismissed it, and wrote in a bold hand, rather carefully,--
That was surely an excellent title. He proceeded:--
_On the old stone bridge, beneath which the clear, smooth waters of the river have crept at the same pace for centuries, stands a little child, alone. It is early morning, and the clock of the time-stained cathedral which lifts its noble gothic towers scarce a hundred yards away, strikes five, to the accompaniment of an unseen lark overhead._
He sat back to excogitate the next sentence, staring around the room as if he expected to find the words written on the wall. One of the gilt-framed photographs was slightly askew; he left his chair to put it straight; several other pictures seemed to need adjustment, and he levelled them all with scrupulous precision. The ornaments on the mantelpiece were not evenly balanced; these he rearranged entirely. Then, having first smoothed out a crease in the bedcover, he sat down again.
But most of the beautiful ideas which he had persuaded himself were firmly within his grasp, now eluded him, or tardily presented themselves in a form so obscure as to be valueless, and the useful few that remained defied all attempts to bring them into order. Dashed by his own impotence, he sought out the article on Sark, and examined it afresh. Certain weekly organs of literature had educated him to sneer at the journalism of the daily press, but it appeared that the man who wrote "An Island of Sleep" was at least capable of expressing himself with clearness and fluency, and possessed the skill to pass naturally from one aspect of his subject to another. It seemed simple enough....
The sky was a delicate amber, and Richard watched it change to rose, and from rose to light blue. The gas-lamps glared out in quick succession; some one lowered the blind of a window opposite his own, and presently a woman's profile was silhouetted against it for a moment, and then vanished. A melody came from the public house, sung in a raucous baritone to the thrumming of a guitar; the cries of the playing children had now ceased.
Suddenly turning into the room, he was astonished to find it almost in darkness; he could distinguish only the whiteness of the papers on the table.