"Yes" because it was the easiest thing for his shyness to do, Mr. Oxford
being a determined man. Priam was afraid to go. He was disturbed,
alarmed, affrighted, by the mystery of Mr. Oxford's silence.

They arrived at the club in the car.


_The Club_


Priam had never been in a club before. The statement may astonish, may
even meet with incredulity, but it is true. He had left the land of
clubs early in life. As for the English clubs in European towns, he was
familiar with their exteriors, and with the amiable babble of their
supporters at _tables d'hôte,_ and his desire for further knowledge had
not been so hot as to inconvenience him. Hence he knew nothing of clubs.

Mr. Oxford's club alarmed and intimidated him; it was so big and so
black. Externally it resembled a town-hall of some great industrial
town. As you stood on the pavement at the bottom of the flight of giant
steps that led to the first pair of swinging doors, your head was
certainly lower than the feet of a being who examined you sternly from
the other side of the glass. Your head was also far below the sills of
the mighty windows of the ground-floor. There were two storeys above the
ground-floor, and above them a projecting eave of carven stone that
threatened the uplifted eye like a menace. The tenth part of a slate,
the merest chip of a corner, falling from the lofty summit of that pile,
would have slain elephants. And all the façade was black, black with
ages of carbonic deposit. The notion that the building was a town-hall
that had got itself misplaced and perverted gradually left you as you