open
a heavy door on the top floor, and turn up the gas. It is a little room
I am in once again, and very dusty. A pile of papers and magazines
stands as high as a table in the corner furthest from the door. The cane
chair shows the exact shape of Marriot's back. What is left (after
lighting the fire) of a frame picture lies on the hearth-rug. Gilray
walks in uninvited. He has left word that his visitors are to be sent on
to me. The room fills. My hand feels along the mantelpiece for a brown
jar. The jar is between my knees; I fill my pipe....

After a time the music ceases, and my wife puts her hand on my shoulder.
Perhaps I start a little, and then she says I have been asleep. This is
the book of my dreams.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.

MY FIRST CIGAR.

[Illustration]

It was not in my chambers, but three hundred miles further north, that
I learned to smoke. I think I may say with confidence that a first cigar
was never smoked in such circumstances before.

At that time I was a school-boy, living with my brother, who was a man.
People mistook our relations, and thought I was his son. They would ask
me how my father was, and when he heard of this he scowled at me. Even
to this day I look so young that people who remember me as a boy now
think I must be that boy's younger brother. I shall tell presently of
a strange mistake of this kind, but at present I am thinking of the
evening when my brother's eldest daughter was born--perhaps the most
trying evening he and I ever passed together. So far as I knew, the
affair was very sudden, and I felt sorry for my brother as well as for
myself.

We sat together in the study, he on an arm-chair drawn near the fire and
I on the couch. I cannot say now at what time I began to have an inkling
that there was something wrong. It came upon me gradually and made
me very uncomfortable, though of course I did not show this. I heard
people going up and down stairs, but I was not at that time naturally
suspicious. Comparatively early in the evening I felt that my brother
had something on his mind. As a rule, when we were left together, he
yawned or drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair to show that
he did not feel uncomfortable, or I made a pretence of being at ease by
playing with the dog or saying that the room was close. Then one of us
would rise, remark that he had left his book in the dining-room, and
go away to look for it, taking care not to come back ti