A tiny jet of gas made a glimmer in the fan-light of Mrs. Downey's
boarding-house next door. Mrs. Downey kept it burning there for Mr.
Rickman.

Guided by this beacon, he reached his door, escaping many dangers. For
the curbstone was a rocking precipice, and the street below it a grey
and shimmering stream, that rolled, and flowed, and rolled, and never
rested. The houses, too, were so drunk as to be dangerous. They bowed
over him, swaying hideously from their foundations. They seemed to be
attracted, just as he was, by that abominable slimy flow and glister
of the asphalt. Another wriggle of the latch-key, and they would be
over on the top of him.

He approached his bedroom candle with infinite precaution. He had
tried to effect a noiseless entry, but every match, as it spurted and
went out, was a little fiendish spit-fire tongue betraying him. From
behind a bedroom door, ajar at the dark end of the passage, the voice
of Mrs. Downey gently reminded him not to forget to turn the gas out.

There was a bright clear space in his brain which Pilkington's
champagne had not penetrated, so intolerably clear and bright that it
hurt him to look at it. In that space three figures reeled and
whirled; three, yet one and the same; Poppy of the coster-dance, Poppy
of the lunatic ballet, and Poppy of the Arabian night. Beyond the
bright space and the figures there was a dark place that was somehow
curtained off. Something had happened there, he could not see what.
And in trying to see he forgot to turn the gas out. He turned it up
instead.

He left it blazing away at the rate of a penny an hour, a witness