t
manifestations. An icy wave passed down his spine. He felt that if the
phantom of Mrs. Haim was approaching him he simply could not bear to
meet it. The ordeal would kill him. Then he decided that the sounds were
not those of a washing-cloth, but of slippered feet. Odd that he should
have been so deluded. Somebody was coming down the long stairs from the
upper stories, uninhabited at night. Burglars? He was still very
perturbed, but differently perturbed. He could not move a muscle. The
suspense as the footsteps hesitated at the cubicle was awful. George
stood up straight and called out in a rough voice--louder than he
expected it to be:

"Who's there?"

Mr. Enwright appeared. He was wearing beautiful blue pyjamas and a
plum-coloured silk dressing-gown and doe-skin slippers. His hair was
extremely deranged; he blinked rapidly, and his lined face seemed very
old.

"Well, I like this, I like this!" he said in a quiet, sardonic tone.
"Sitting at my desk and blazing my electricity away! I happened to get
up, and I looked out of the window and noticed the glare below. So I
came to see what was afoot. Do you know you frightened me?--and I don't
like being frightened."

"I hadn't the slightest notion you ever slept here," George feebly
stammered.

"Didn't you know I'd decided to keep a couple of rooms here for myself?"

"I had heard something about it, but I didn't know you'd really moved
in. I--I've been away so much."

"I moved in, as you call it, to-day--yesterday, and a nice night you're
giving me! And even supposing I hadn't moved in, what's that got to do
with your being here? Give me a cigarette."

With hurrying deference George gave the cigarette, and struck a match
for it, and as he held the match he had a near view of Mr. Enwright's
prosaic unshaved chin. The house was no longer the haunt of lurking
phantoms; it was a common worldly house without any mystery or any
menace. George's skin was no longer the field of abnormal phenomena.
Dawn was conquering Russell Square. On the other hand, George was no
longer a giant of energy, initiating out of ample experience a
tremendous and superb enterprise. He was suddenly diminished to a boy,
or at best a lad. He really felt that it was ridiculous for him to be
sketching and scratching away there in the middle of the night in his
dress-clothes. Even his overcoat, hat, and fancy muffler cast on a chair
seemed ridiculous. He was a child, pretending to be an adult. He