The blow has seemed so
catastrophic that the world must be changed with the force of its fall--
but the world is _not_ changed; hours pass and days go by, and no one
seems to be aware that anything has occurred...it is only when months
have gone, and perhaps years, that one looks back and sees that it was,
after all, on such and such a day that life was altered, values shifted,
the face of the world turned to a new angle.
This is platitudinous, but platitudes are not platitudes when we first
make our personal experience of them. There seemed nothing platitudinous
to Brandon in his present experiences. The day on which he had received
Falk's letter had seemed to fling him neck and crop into a new world--a
world dim and obscure and peopled with new and terrifying devils. The
morning after, he was clear again, and it was almost as though nothing at
all had occurred. He went about the town, and everybody behaved in a
normal manner. No sign of those strange menacing figures, the drunken
painter, the sinister, smiling Hogg; every one as usual.
Ryle complacent and obedient; Bentinck-Major officious but subservient;
Mrs.
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