go each rope as the fuses reached the cart.
However, on winding one fuse, I found that the mechanism would not go,
choked with scoriae; and I had to resign myself to the task of opening
and dusting every one: a wretched labour in which I spent that day, like
a workman. But about four I threw them to the devil, having done two
hundred odd, and then hummed back in the motor to London.

* * * * *

That same evening at six I paid, for the first time, a visit to my old
self in Harley Street. It was getting dark, and a bleak storm that
hooted like whooping-cough swept the world. At once I saw that even _I_
had been invaded: for my door swung open, banging, a lowered catch
preventing it from slamming; in the passage the car-lamp shewed me a
young man who seemed a Jew, sitting as if in sleep with dropped head, a
back-tilted silk-hat pressed down upon his head to the ears; and lying
on face, or back, or side, six more, one a girl with Arlesienne
head-dress, one a negress, one a Deal lifeboat's-man, and three of
uncertain race; the first room--the waiting-room--is much more
numerously occupied, though there still, on the table, lies the volume
of _Punch_, the _Gentlewoman_, and the book of London views in
heliograph. Behind this, descending two steps, is the study and
consulting-room, and there, as ever, the revolving-cover oak
writing-desk: but on my little shabby-red sofa, a large lady much too
big for it, in shimmering brown silk, round her left wrist a _trousseau_
of massive gold trinkets, her head dropped right back, almost severed by
an infernal gash from the throat. Here were two old silver
candle-sticks, which I lit, and went upstairs: in the drawing-room sat
my old house-keeper, placidly dead in a rocking-chair, her left hand
pressing down a batch of the open piano-keys, among many strangers. But
she was very good: she had locked my bedroom against intrusion; and as
the door stands across a corner behind a green-baize curtain, it had not
been seen, or, at least, not forced. I did not know where the key might
be, but a few thumps with my back drove it open: and there lay my bed
intact, and everything tidy. This was a strange coming-back to it, Adam.

But what intensely interested me in that room was a big thing standing
at the maroon-and-gold wall between wardrobe and dressing-table--that
gilt frame--and that man painted within it there. It was myself in oils,
done by--I forget his name n