alciform garden.

Soon the landlady opened the door and stood inquisitively in the narrow
passage. She was a woman of probably about thirty-five with stubby
fingers; her skin was rather moist, but she had a good-natured
expression, and perhaps when the curl-papers were taken out from her
colorless hair, and when lace frills and common finery should soften her
turgid outlines she would be handsome in a labored sort of way. The
discussion with Mrs. Murdoch about her vacant rooms did not take long.
Michael had made up his mind to any horrors of dirt and discomfort, and
he was really pleasantly surprised by their appearance. As for Mrs.
Murdoch, she was evidently too much interested to know what had brought
Michael to her house to make any difficulties in the way of his
accommodation.

"Will you want dinner to-night?" she asked doubtfully.

"No, but I'd like some tea now, if you can manage it; and I suppose you
can let me have a latchkey?"

"I've got the kettle on the boil at this moment. I was going out myself
for the evening. Meeting my husband at the Horseshoe. There's only one
other lodger--Miss Carlyle. And she's in the profession."

As Mrs. Murdoch made this announcement, she looked up at the fly-frecked
ceiling, and Michael thought how extraordinarily light and meaningless
her eyes were and how curiously dim and heavy this small sitting-room
was against the brilliancy of the external summer.

"Well, then, tea when I can get it," said Mrs. Murdoch cheerfully. "And
the double-u is just next your bedroom on the top floor. That's all, I
think."

She left him with a backward smile over her shoulder, as if she were
loath to relinquish the study of this unusual visitor to Neptune
Crescent.

Michael when he was alone examined the chairs that were standing about
the room as stiff as grenadiers in their red rep. He stripped them of
their antimacassars and pulled the one that looked least uncomfortable
close to the window. Outside, the yellow cat was still mewing; but the
cab was gone and down the gray street that led to Neptune Crescent here
and there sad-gaited wayfarers were visible. Two or three sparrows were
cheeping in a battered laburnum, and all along the horizon the blue sky
descending to the smoke of London had lost its color and had been turned
to the similitude of tarnished metal. A luxurious mournfulness was in
the view, and he leaned out over the sill scenting the reasty London
air.

It was with a sudd