That morning I got up from my breakfast, pushing the chair back, and rang the bell violently, or perhaps I should say resolutely, or perhaps I should say eagerly, I do not know.  But manifestly it must have been a special ring of the bell, a common sound made impressive, like the ringing of a bell for the raising of the curtain upon a new scene.  It was an unusual thing for me to do.  Generally, I dawdled over my breakfast and I solemn took the trouble to ring the bell for the table to be cleared away; but on that morning for some reason hidden in the general mysteriousness of the event I did not dawdle.  And yet I was not in a hurry.  I pulled the cord casually and while the faint tinkling somewhere down in the basement went on, I charged my pipe in the usual way and I looked for the matchbox with glances distraught indeed but exhibiting, I am ready to swear, no signs of a fine frenzy.  I was composed enough to perceive after some considerable time the matchbox lying there on the mantelpiece right under my nose.  And all this was beautifully and safely usual.  Before I had thrown down the match my landlady’s daughter appeared with her calm, pale face and an inquisitive look, in the doorway.  Of late it was the landlady’s daughter who answered my bell.  I mention this little fact with pride, because it proves that during the thirty or forty days of my tenancy I had produced a favourable impression.  For a fortnight past I had been spared the unattractive sight of the domestic slave.  The girls in that Bessborough Gardens house were often changed, but whether short or long, fair or dark, they were always untidy and particularly bedraggled as if in a sordid version of the fairy tale the ashbin cat had been changed into a maid.  I was infinitely sensible of the privilege of being waited on by my landlady’s daughter.  She was neat if anaemic.

“Will you please clear away all this at once?” I addressed her in convulsive accents, being at the same time engaged in getting my pipe to draw.  This, I admit, was an unusual request.  Generally on getting up from breakfast I would sit down in the window with a book and let them clear the table when they liked; but if you think that on that morning I was in the least impatient, you are mistaken.  I remember that I was perfectly calm.  As a matter of fact I was not at all certain that I wanted to write, or that I meant to write, or that I had anything to write about.  No, I was not impatient.  I lounged between the mantelpiece and the window, not even consciously waiting for the table to be cleared.  It was ten to one that before my landlady’s daughter was done I would pick up a book and sit down with it all the morning in a spirit of enjoyable indolence.  I affirm it with assurance, and I don’t even know now what were the books then lying about the room.  Whatever they were they were not the works of great masters, where the secret of clear thought and exact expression can be found.  Since the age