the noise of a door
hurriedly slammed; and sometimes he would see go down the ulcerous steps
in front of the house depressing women in black, or unshaven men with
the debtor's wary and furtive eye. The only lodgers who seemed to be
permanent were Barnes and Carvel the Solutionist. Barnes on the strength
of Michael's allowance used to go up West, as he described it, every
night. He used to assure Michael, when toward two o'clock of the next
afternoon he extracted himself from bed, that he devoted himself with
the greatest pertinacity to obtaining definite news of Lily Haden. The
Solutionist occasionally visited Michael with a draggled piece of
newspaper, and often he was visible in the garden attending to a couple
of Belgian hares who lived in a packing-case marked Fragile among the
nettles of the back-yard.

After he had spent a week or so in absorbing the atmosphere of Leppard
Street, Michael felt it was time for him to move forth again at any rate
into that underworld whose gaiety, however tawdry and feverish, would be
welcome after this turbid backwater. There was here the danger of being
drugged by the miasma that rose from this unreflecting surface. He felt
inclined to renew his acquaintance with Daisy Palmer, and to hear from
her the sequel to the affair of Dolly Wearne and Hungarian Dave. He
found her card with the Guilford Street address and went over to
Bloomsbury, hoping to find her in to tea. The landlady looked surprised
when he inquired for Miss Palmer.

"Oh, she's been gone this fortnight," the woman informed him. Michael
asked where she was living now.

"I don't know, I'm sure," said the landlady, and as she was already
slowly and very unpleasantly closing the door, Michael came away a
little disconsolate. These abrupt dematerializations of the underworld
were really very difficult to grapple with. It gave him a sense of the
futility of his search for Lily (though lately he had prosecuted it
somewhat lazily) when girls, who a month ago offered what was presumably
a permanent address, could have vanished completely a fortnight later.
Perhaps Daisy would be at the Orange. He would take Barnes with him this
evening and ask his opinion of her and Dolly and Hungarian Dave.

The beerhall downstairs looked exactly the same as when he had visited
it a month ago. Michael could sympathize with the affection such places
roused in the hearts of their frequenters. There was a great deal to be
said for an institut