ons being a sprinkling of women, pictures of
ungovernable fury.

Yet my feeling was not one of joy at my escape. Strange mind of
man!--instead, even with the Wenuses' victims lying all around me, my
heart went out to the Crinoline and its astral occupants. I, too, wished
to be mashed. And suddenly I was aware that my wife knew that I was
thinking thus. With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through
the Park.

IV.

HOW I REACHED HOME.

I remember nothing of my flight, except the stress of blundering against
trees and stumbling over the railings. To blunder against some trees is
very stressful. At last I could go no further: I had run full tilt into
a gasworks. I fell and lay still.

I must have remained there some time.

Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without, came--Beer. It was
being poured down my throat by my cousin's man, and I recollect thinking
that he must have used the same can with which he filled the lamps. How
he got there I cannot pretend to tell.

"What news from the park?" said I.

"Eh!" said my cousin's man.

"What news from the Park?" I said.

"Garn! 'oo yer getting at?" said my cousin's man. "Aint yer just _been_
there?" (The italics are his own.) "People seem fair silly abart the
Pawk. Wot's it all abart?"

"Haven't you heard of the Wenuses?" said I. "The women from Wenus?"
"Quite enough," said my cousin's man, and laughed.

I felt foolish and angry.

"You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on my way.

Judging by the names of the streets, I seemed to be at Kennington, and
it was an hour after dawn, and my collar had burst away from its stud.
But I had ceased to feel fear. My terror had fallen from me like a bath
towel. Three things struggled for the possession of my mind: the beauty
of Kennington, the whereabouts of the Wenuses, and the wengeance of my
wife. In spite of my cousin's man's beer, which I could still taste, I
was ravenously hungry; so, seeing no one about, I broke into a chemist's
shop and stayed the pangs on a cake of petroleum soap, some Parrish's
food, and a box of menthol pastilles, which I washed down with a split
ammoniated quinine and Condy. I then stole across the road, and dragging
the cushions from a deserted cab (No. 8648) into the cab shelter, I
snatched a few more hours of restless sleep.

When I woke I found myself thinking consecutively, a thing I do not
remember to have done since I killed the curate in the other book. In