He lingers a little while.
Mulling a mingle of uncertainties.
A placid shade between the candle-fires of human desire that overrun the hanging tenements at his back, and the moldy gloom that roils darkly ahead.
It is lifting now, this gloom.
There is sleepy birdsong.
He has known these ways and alleys since men first set thought to leaf, and then raised them up into vestments of granite and brass and iron.