the poky Chelsea flat where I and my sister kept impecunious house, I
realized other points as well. Unworthy details flashed across me to
entice: the fine library, the organ, the quiet work-room I should have,
perfect service, the delicious cup of early tea, and hot baths at any
moment of the day--without a geyser!

"It's a longish visit, a month--isn't it?" I hedged, smiling at the
details that seduced me, and ashamed of my man's selfishness, yet
knowing that Frances expected it of me. "There are points about it, I
admit. If you're set on my going with you, I could manage it all right."

I spoke at length in this way because my sister made no answer. I saw
her tired eyes gazing into the dreariness of Oakley Street and felt a
pang strike through me. After a pause, in which again she said no word,
I added: "So, when you write the letter, you might hint, perhaps, that I
usually work all the morning, and--er--am not a very lively visitor!
Then she'll understand, you see." And I half-rose to return to my
diminutive study, where I was slaving, just then, at an absorbing
article on Comparative Aesthetic Values in the Blind and Deaf.

But Frances did not move. She kept her grey eyes upon Oakley Street
where the evening mist from the river drew mournful perspectives into
view. It was late October. We heard the omnibuses thundering across the
bridge. The monotony of that broad, characterless street seemed more
than usually depressing. Even in June sunshine it was dead, but with
autumn its melancholy soaked into every house between King's Road and
the Embankment. It washed thought into the past, instead of inviting it
hopefully towards the future. For me, its easy width was an avenue
through which nameless slums across the river sent creeping messages of
depression, and I always regarded it as Winter's main entrance into