We are jogged by the elbow, roused ruthlessly and curtly bidden to look and see how we are changed, and wonder, weep, or smile as may seem best to us in face of the metamorphosis.

A moment of such awakening came to me now; I seemed a man different from him who had, no great number of minutes before, hastened to the house, inspired by an insane hope, and aflame with a passion that defied reason and summed up life in longing.

The lackeys were there still, the maid's smile altered only by a fuller and more roguish insinuation.

On me the change had passed, and I looked open-eyed on what I had been.

Then came a smile, close neighbour to a groan, and the scorn of my old self which is the sad delirium wrought by moving time; but the lackey held the door for me and I passed out.
A noise sounded from above as the casement of the window was thrown open.