and are living on your stock of clothes. I had trudged all over
London in search of work,--work of any kind would have been
welcome, so long as it would have enabled me to keep body and soul
together. And I had trudged in vain. Now I had been refused
admittance as a casual,--how easy is the descent! But I did not
tell the man lying on the bed all this. He did not wish to hear,--
had he wished he would have made me tell him.

It may be that he read my story, unspoken though it was,--it is
conceivable. His eyes had powers of penetration which were
peculiarly their own,--that I know.

'Undress!'

When he spoke again that was what he said, in those guttural tones
of his in which there was a reminiscence of some foreign land. I
obeyed, letting my sodden, shabby clothes fall anyhow upon the
floor. A look came on his face, as I stood naked in front of him,
which, if it was meant for a smile, was a satyr's smile, and which
filled me with a sensation of shuddering repulsion.

'What a white skin you have,--how white! What would I not give for
a skin as white as that,--ah yes!' He paused, devouring me with
his glances; then continued. 'Go to the cupboard; you will find a
cloak; put it on.'

I went to a cupboard which was in a corner of the room, his eyes
following me as I moved. It was full of clothing,--garments which
might have formed the stock-in-trade of a costumier whose
speciality was providing costumes for masquerades. A long dark