Meantime the Wenuses, flushed with their success in Westbourne Grove,
had carried their devastating course in a south-easterly direction,
looting Marshall and Snelgrove's, bearing away the entire stock of
driving-gloves from Sleep's and subjecting Redfern's to the asphyxiating
fumes of the Red Weed.

It is calculated that they spent nearly two days in Jay's, trying on all
the costumes in that establishment, and a week in Peter Robinson's.
During these days I never quitted Uxbridge Road Station, for just as I
was preparing to leave, my eye caught the title on the bookstall of
Grant Allen's work, _The Idea of Evolution!_ and I could not stir from
the platform until I had skimmed it from cover to cover.

Wearily mounting the stairs, I then turned my face westward. At the
corner of Royal Crescent, just by the cabstand, I found a man lying in
the roadway. His face was stained with the Red Weed, and his language
was quite unfit for the columns of _Nature_.

I applied a limp lettuce to his fevered brow, took his temperature with
my theodolite, and pressing a copy of _Home Chat_ into his unresisting
hand, passed on with a sigh. I think I should have stayed with him but
for the abnormal obtusity of his facial angle.

Turning up Clarendon Road, I heard the faint words of the Wenusberg
music by Wagner from a pianoforte in the second story of No. 34. I
stepped quickly into a jeweller's shop across the road, carried off
eighteen immature carats from a tray on the counter, and pitched them
through the open window at the invisible pianist. The music ceased
suddenly.