stood solitary on the rank--a depressing object. Emmy shivered at the
sight.

"I can't stand it. Drive me to my door. I know I'm a beast, Septimus dear,
but I am grateful. I am, really."

The cab received them into its musty interior and drove them through the
foggy brown of a London winter dawn. Unimaginable cheerlessness enveloped
them. The world wore an air of disgust at having to get up on such a
morning. The atmosphere for thirty yards around them was clear enough, with
the clearness of yellow consommé, but ahead it stood thick, like a purée of
bad vegetables. They passed through Belgravia, and the white-blinded houses
gave an impression of universal death, and the empty streets seemed waiting
for the doors to open and the mourners to issue forth. The cab, too, had
something of the sinister, in that it was haunted by the ghosts of a
fourpenny cigar and a sixpenny bottle of scent which continued a lugubrious
flirtation; and the windows rattled a _danse macabre_. At last it pulled up
at the door of Emmy's Mansions in Chelsea.

She looked at him very piteously, like a frightened child. Her pretty mouth
was never strong, but when the corners drooped it was babyish. She slipped
her hand in his.

"Don't leave me just yet. It's silly, I know--but this awful journey has
taken everything out of me. Every bit of it has been worse than the last.
Edith--that's my maid--will light a fire--you must get warm before you
start--and she'll make some coffee. Oh, do come. You can keep the cab."

"But what will your maid think?" asked Septimus, who for all his vagueness
had definite traditions as to the proprieties of life.