Wait was not there to hear him. He was swaggering up the East India
Dock Road; saying kindly, "Come along for a treat," pushing glass
swing-doors, posing with superb assurance in the gaslight above a
mahogany counter.--"D'yer think yer will ever get ashore?" asked Donkin,
angrily. Wait came back with a start.--"Ten days," he said, promptly,
and returned at once to the regions of memory that know nothing of time.
He felt untired, calm, and safely withdrawn within himself beyond the
reach of every grave incertitude. There was something of the immutable
quality of eternity in the slow moments of his complete rest-fulness. He
was very quiet and easy amongst his vivid reminiscences which he mistook
joyfully for images of an undoubted future. He cared for no one. Donkin
felt this vaguely like a blind man feeling in his darkness the fatal
antagonism of all the surrounding existences, that to him shall for ever
remain irrealisable, unseen and enviable. He had a desire to assert
his importance, to break, to crush; to be even with everybody for
everything; to tear the veil, unmask, expose, leave no refuge--a
perfidious desire of truthfulness! He laughed in a mocking splutter and
said:
"Ten days.
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