It was the hour when all the dogs were taken for the last exercise of the
day. Every kind, of dog was there, but especially the fat and pampered
variety--Poms, King Charles, Pekinese, Dachshunds--a few bigger dogs, and
even one mournful-eyed Dane who walked with melancholy superiority, as a
king amongst his vassals.
The street stirred with the patterings of dogs. The light slid down the
sky--voices rang in the clear air softly as though the dying day had
besought them to be tender. The colours of the shops, of the green trees,
of slim and beautifully-dressed houses were powdered with gold-dust; the
church in Sloane Square began to ring its bells.
Peter, as he turned down the street, was cold--perhaps because
Knightsbridge had been blazing with sunshine and the light here was
hidden.... No, it was more than that....
"They say," he thought, "that Cornishmen always know when a disaster's
coming. If that's true, something ought to be going to happen to me."
And then, in a flash, that sound that he had been half-subconsciously
expecting, came--the sound of the sea. He could hear it quite distinctly, a
distant, half-determined movement that seemed so vast in its roll and
plunge, so sharp in the shock with which it met the shore, and yet so
subdued that it might be many thousands of miles away. It was as though a
vast tide were dragging back a million shells from an endless shore--the
dragging hiss, the hesitating suspense in mid-air, and then the rattle of
the returning wave.
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