Alvan Hervey turned twice to the left, once to the right, walked along two sides of a square, in the middle of which groups of tame-looking trees stood in respectable captivity behind iron railings, and rang at his door.  A parlour-maid opened.  A fad of his wife’s, this, to have only women servants.  That girl, while she took his hat and overcoat, said something which made him look at his watch.  It was five o’clock, and his wife not at home.  There was nothing unusual in that.  He said, “No; no tea,” and went upstairs.

He ascended without footfalls.  Brass rods glimmered all up the red carpet.  On the first-floor landing a marble woman, decently covered from neck to instep with stone draperies, advanced a row of lifeless toes to the edge of the pedestal, and thrust out blindly a rigid white arm holding a cluster of lights.  He had artistic tastes—­at home.  Heavy curtains caught back, half concealed dark corners.  On the rich, stamped paper of the walls hung sketches, water-colours, engravings.  His tastes were distinctly artistic.  Old church towers peeped above green masses of foliage; the hills were purple, the sands yellow, the seas sunny, the skies blue.  A young lady sprawled with dreamy eyes in a moored boat, in company of a lunch basket, a champagne bottle, and an enamoured man in a blazer.  Bare-legged boys flirted sweetly with ragged maidens, slept on stone steps, gambolled with dogs.  A pathetically lean girl flattened against a blank wall, turned up expiring eyes and tendered a flower for sale; while, near by, the large photographs of some famous and mutilated bas-reliefs seemed to represent a massacre turned into stone.

He looked, of course, at nothing, ascended another flight of stairs and went straight into the dressing room.  A bronze dragon nailed by the tail to a bracket writhed away from the wall in calm convolutions, and held, between the conventional fury of its jaws, a crude gas flame that resembled a butterfly.  The room was empty, of course; but, as he stepped in, it became filled all at once with a stir of many people; because the strips of glass on the doors of wardrobes and his wife’s large pier-glass reflected him from head to foot, and multiplied his image into a crowd of gentlemanly and slavish imitators, who were dressed exactly like himself; had the same restrained and rare gestures; who moved when he moved, stood still with him in an obsequious immobility, and had just such appearances of life and feeling as he thought it dignified and safe for any man to manifest.  And like real people who are slaves of common thoughts, that are not even their own, they affected a shadowy independence by the superficial variety of their movements.  They moved together with him; but they either advanced to meet him, or walked away from him; they appeared, disappeared; they seemed to dodge behind walnut furniture, to be seen again, far within the polished panes, stepping about distinct and unreal in the convincing illusion of a room.  And like the men he respected they could be trusted to do nothing individual, original, or startling—­nothing unforeseen and nothing improper.