further towards a visit to the Roman Bath, also off the Strand, than
to threaten it.

But I shall get to the Bath yet, because already, thanks to the
intervention of the Hun, I have become intimately acquainted with
Lower Robert Street, and the next step is simple.

In the ordinary way, short of desperate impulse and decision--unless
by some happy chance I had relinquished the burden of this pen and
taken happy service with one of the wine merchants who store their
treasure there--I should never have entered Lower Robert Street at
all, for it goes nowhere and runs under the earth, and it is damp
and mouldy, and the only doors, leading to this vault and that,
are locked. But for all these disabilities Lower Robert Street is,
in Gotha and Zeppelin times, a very present help and refuge. There
assemble, with more or less fortitude and philosophy, the denizens
of the Adelphi, thankful indeed that the brothers Adam established
their streets and terrace on so useful a foundation; and there twice
recently have I joined them. And an odd assembly we have made, ranging
as we do from successful dramatists to needy journalists, with an
actress or so to keep us manly.

There for long hours have we waited until the "All clear" has
sounded--or, at any rate, some have done so. As for myself, on the
last occasion, taking advantage of a lull in the uproar, I crept away
to bed, and, after falling into the sleep of exhaustion, had the
ironical experience of being rudely awakened by the reassuring bugles
and my night again ruined.

Having taken cover only in Lower Robert Street, which is open to