to come and dine
quietly with him in Harley Street on the evening of March 13th. Breton
accepted if he might be released at nine-thirty, as he had then another
appointment.

"Can't stand a whole evening," thought Christopher, "thinks I want to
bully him. Well, perhaps I do!"

He was detained to a late hour on that afternoon by a patient in Halkin
Street and it was after seven when he started home, driving through
Piccadilly and Bond Street.

It had been an afternoon of intense closeness, and now as evening came
down upon the town the thick curtain of grey that had been hanging all
day overhead seemed, with a clanking and jolting, one might imagine, so
heavy and brazen was its aspect, to fall lower above the dim grey
streets. The lights were out, swinging pale and distended down the
length of Piccadilly, and already the carriages were pressing in a long
row towards the restaurants; boys were crying the latest editions with
the war news and upon all those ears their cries now fell drearily,
monotonously, for so long had the town been filled with details of
escape, folly, death, ignominy, that it was tired and weary of any voice
or cry that concerned itself with War....

Christopher, waiting impatiently for his carriage to move on, thought of
Brun; this oppressive, stifling evening seemed to call, in some manner
too subtle for Christopher's powers of expression, the houses, the
streets, the lamps, the very railings into some life of their own. Under
the iron sky that surely with every minute dropped lower upon the
oppressed town the clubs opposite the Green Park raised their hooded
eyes and stirred ever so little above the people, and the twisted
chimneys watched and whispered, as the trail of carriages wound,
drearily, into the misty distance. Christopher was not an imaginative
man, but he thought that he had never known London so evilly perceptive.

It grew hotter and hotter, but with a heat that made the body perspire
and yet left it cold. A dim yellow colour, that seemed to herald a fog
that had not made up its mind whether it would appear or no, hung at
street corners. Figures seemed furtive in the half-light and,
instinctively, voices were lowered as though some sudden sound would
explode the air like a match in a gas-filled room. A bell began to ring
and startled everyone....

"There'll be an awful thunderstorm soon," thought Christopher. "I've
never known things so heavy. Everyone's nerves will be on the st