ast, and then put up at a good hotel, and
accumulate a new outfit of property. I felt amazingly confident;
it's not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass. I went
into a place and was already ordering lunch, when it occurred to me
that I could not eat unless I exposed my invisible face. I finished
ordering the lunch, told the man I should be back in ten minutes,
and went out exasperated. I don't know if you have ever been
disappointed in your appetite."

"Not quite so badly," said Kemp, "but I can imagine it."

"I could have smashed the silly devils. At last, faint with the
desire for tasteful food, I went into another place and demanded a
private room. 'I am disfigured,' I said. 'Badly.' They looked at
me curiously, but of course it was not their affair--and so at
last I got my lunch. It was not particularly well served, but it
sufficed; and when I had had it, I sat over a cigar, trying to plan
my line of action. And outside a snowstorm was beginning.

"The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realised what a
helpless absurdity an Invisible Man was--in a cold and dirty
climate and a crowded civilised city. Before I made this mad
experiment I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon
it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things
a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible
to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they
are got. Ambition--what is the good of pride of place when you
cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when
her name must needs be Delilah? I have no taste for politics, for
the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was
I to do? And for this I had become a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed
and bandaged caricature of a man!"

He paused, and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the
window.

"But how did you get to Iping?" said Kemp, anxious to keep his
guest busy talking.

"I went there to work. I had one hope. It was a half idea! I have
it still. It is a full blown idea now. A way of getting back! Of
restoring what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I
mean to do invisibly. And that is what I chiefly want to talk to
you about now."

"You went straight to Iping?"

"Yes. I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda and my
cheque-book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of
chemicals to work out this idea of mine--I will show you the
calculations as