against some heavy hanging, soft and thick in texture, which gave a
rustling noise at my touch. I grasped this and pulled it; it appeared to
be a curtain suspended over the head of my bed.

I was now thoroughly awake, and beginning to realise that I was in a
strange room. I was puzzled. I tried to recall the overnight
circumstances, and I found them now, curiously enough, vivid in my memory:
the supper, my reception of the little packages, my wonder whether I was
intoxicated, my slow undressing, the coolness to my flushed face of my
pillow. I felt a sudden distrust. Was that last night, or the night
before? At any rate, this room was strange to me, and I could not imagine
how I had got into it. The dim, pallid outline was growing paler, and I
perceived it was a window, with the dark shape of an oval toilet-glass
against the weak intimation of the dawn that filtered through the blind. I
stood up, and was surprised by a curious feeling of weakness and
unsteadiness. With trembling hands outstretched, I walked slowly towards
the window, getting, nevertheless, a bruise on the knee from a chair by
the way. I fumbled round the glass, which was large, with handsome brass
sconces, to find the blind cord. I could not find any. By chance I took
hold of the tassel, and with the click of a spring the blind ran up.

I found myself looking out upon a scene that was altogether strange to me.
The night was overcast, and through the flocculent grey of the heaped
clouds there filtered a faint half-light of dawn. Just at the edge of the
sky the cloud-canopy had a blood-red rim. Below, everything was dark and
indistinct, dim hills in the distance, a vague mass of buildings running
up into pinnacles, trees like spilt ink, and below the window a tracery of
black bushes and pale grey paths. It was so unfamiliar that for the moment
I thought myself still dreaming. I felt the toilet-table; it appeared to
be made of some polished wood, and was rather elaborately furnished--there