They were all
closed of course, but along the pavement women and old men had baskets
containing sweets and notepaper and red paper tulips offered in memory
of the glorious Revolution. Right across the Square the groups of people
scattered in little dusky pools against the snow, until they touched the
very doors of the church.... I saw all this, was conscious that the
stars and the church candles mingled... then suddenly I had to clutch
the side of the booth behind me to prevent myself from falling. My head
swam, my limbs were as water, and my old so well-remembered friend
struck me in the middle of the spine as though he had cut me in two with
his knife. How was I ever to get home? No one noticed me--indeed they
seemed to my sick eyes to have ceased to be human. Ghosts in a ghostly
world, the snow gleaming through them so that they only moved like a
thin diaphanous veil against the wall of the sky... I clutched my
booth. In a moment I should be down. The pain in my back was agony, my
legs had ceased to exist, and I was falling into a dark, dark pool of
clear jet-black water, at the bottom of which lay a star.
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