Not the snow, the mountains and the narrow waters that were the traditional emblems of his home, but the sights and sounds he had grown up among—the squalid rows of lime-washed huts, their roofs dripping icicles, mongrels fighting for scraps in the frozen slush between them. Here around him was the mythical country of his childhood, the vast depths of sky, the snow-peaked grandeur, and bedecked with glowing creatures from a dream. He almost paused to look around at the play of the aurora and the living lights among the trees. But that would just have been to torment himself with what might have been. The worm was in the apple, the snake was in the garden, and had always been, even before one of the children had named him, and he had gone to public trial. So now he hurried, head lowered and hands in pockets, driven more by the fear of failing his precarious ideals than by a rational concern that he might be watched. At the entrance, Sidney Tallis at the desk raised his eyes as Larsen went past, but said nothing.
