tartling--nothing unforeseen and nothing
improper.

He moved for a time aimlessly in that good company, humming a popular
but refined tune, and thinking vaguely of a business letter from abroad,
which had to be answered on the morrow with cautious prevarication.
Then, as he walked towards a wardrobe, he saw appearing at his back, in
the high mirror, the corner of his wife's dressing-table, and amongst
the glitter of silver-mounted objects on it, the square white patch of
an envelope. It was such an unusual thing to be seen there that he spun
round almost before he realized his surprise; and all the sham men
about him pivoted on their heels; all appeared surprised; and all moved
rapidly towards envelopes on dressing-tables.

He recognized his wife's handwriting and saw that the envelope was
addressed to himself. He muttered, "How very odd," and felt annoyed.
Apart from any odd action being essentially an indecent thing in itself,
the fact of his wife indulging in it made it doubly offensive. That she
should write to him at all, when she knew he would be home for dinner,
was perfectly ridiculous; but that she should leave it like this--in
evidence for chance discovery--struck him as so outrageous that,
thinking of it, he experienced suddenly a staggering sense of
insecurity, an absurd and bizarre flash of a notion that the house had
moved a little under his feet. He tore the envelope open, glanced at the
letter, and sat down in a chair near by.

He held the paper before his eyes and looked at half a dozen lines
scrawled on the page, while he was stunned by a noise meaningless
and violent, like the clash of gongs or the beating of drums; a great
aimless uproar that, in a manner, prevented him from hearing himself
think and made his mind an absolute blank. This absurd and distracting
tumult seemed to ooze out of the written words, to issue from between
his very fingers that trembled, holding the paper. And suddenly he
dropped the letter as though it had been something hot, or venomous, or
filthy; and rushing to the window with the unreflecting precipitation
of a man anxious to raise an alarm of fire or murder, he threw it up and
put his head out.

A chill gust of wind, wandering through the damp and sooty obscurity
over the waste of roofs and chimney-pots, touched his face with a clammy
flick. He saw an illimitable darkness, in which stood a black jumble of
walls, and, between them, the many rows of gaslights stretched