Assuredly, he has not got a clean conscience.

But, however guilty, he is compassionable.

I stop and speak to him.

He lifts to me out of the night of his hood a face pallid and ruined.

I speak about the weather, of approaching spring.
Heedless he hears, shapes "yes" with the tip of his lips, and says, "It's twelve years now since my wife died; twelve years that I've been utterly alone; twelve years that I've heard the last words she said to me." And the poor maniac glides farther away, hooded in his unintelligible mourning; and certainly he does not hear me wish him good-night.
At the back of the cold downstairs room a fire has been lighted.