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 far away in long lines, like strung-up beads of fire.  A sinister loom as of a hidden conflagration lit up faintly from below the mist, falling upon a billowy and motionless sea of tiles and bricks.  At the rattle of the opened window the world seemed to leap out of the night and confront him, while floating up to his ears there came a sound vast and faint; the deep mutter of something immense and alive.  It penetrated him with a feeling of dismay and he gasped silently.  From the cab-stand in the square came distinct hoarse voices and a jeering laugh which sounded ominously harsh and cruel.  It sounded threatening.  He drew his head in, as if before an aimed blow, and flung the window down quickly.  He made a few steps, stumbled against a chair, and with a great effort, pulled himself together to lay hold of a certain thought that was whizzing about loose in his head.