Home is a place in the mind. When it is empty, it frets. It is fretful with memory, faces and places and times gone by. Beloved images rise up in disobedience and make a mirror for emptiness.

Next winter and next winter and next winter. In the mind they passed all slowly, like clouds across a summer sky, but a sudden call or turn of the head and they disappeared in a rush, shuttling quickly one after the last till nothing was left but a strangeness in the mind, a drop of thought that trembled and was gone, perhaps.

Now in the city there are two worlds. One world has walls around it and one world has people around it. The second world is outside, with the late-winter sky and the bare trees and the hard pavements that stretch in every direction, and with the bright shining shop windows and the chattering crowds. This world has a sightless malicious face, which is the face of the crowd. The face of the crowd is not immediately to be seen, it only becomes apparent after a while, when it shows itself in wondering side-long looks and sharp glances.