As the next morning turned out fairly clear, Wyndham took his materials with him into a hansom, and rang the bell at Grosvenor Place at about ten o'clock. Not only had he decided that his misgivings were entirely morbid, but as a matter of course he had been quite open with the Robinsons about the arrangement. He had indeed explained to Alice some considerable time ago that he should in all likelihood find it necessary to make these fresh sketches on the very scene of the picture. It did not seem anything out of the way to her; she regarded it as a pure matter of work. It was sufficient that she understood his disappearance from the studio in the midst of these busy times. And as he had made it a point that she should possess a key of the new house just as she had had one of the old studio, she and her mother could come and go as they pleased in his absence, and proceed with their engrossing business of embellishing his hall and stairway. But as he set foot in the house at Grosvenor Place after this long interval of years, Wyndham could not maintain his reasoned conviction of the simplicity and insignificance of the occasion. He had the very real thrill of embarking on some extraordinary adventure; even of stepping outside his own existence--that theatre where he had been the spectator of his own fate, whose curtain--fire-proof --had already fallen on a played-out drama. But here was a strange theatre, with a curtain to rise, fascinating with promise of other drama to be revealed; yet the stillness and the dim light cast some spell of awe upon him. A hand seemed to clutch at him and pull him back out of the house at the last moment. He was penetrating here against the warning of his deeper self; his heart beat fast not merely with the consciousness of imprudence, but of downright disloyalty to the settled destiny before which he had bowed his head so profoundly. The warning voice, too, was stern; but the sense of daring, of courting and facing some unknown delicious danger, lured him forward. His lordship had already gone across to his club, the butler informed him; but he had half-expected Wyndham and had left orders in case he should present himself. As he followed the man up to the room he had used of old, he felt, despite the lofty well of the staircase, that the air hung heavy in the great house, muffled and silent with gigantic hangings, and thick carpets underfoot. Wyndham stood at the well-known window a leisurely moment, then arranged a chair or two, and unpacked his materials. The butler helped him to open the casement at the side of the bay and to rearrange the curtain, then asked if there was anything more he could do for him. "Oh, would you get my hat again?" returned Wyndham, as a current of wintry air flowed in. He laughed; having forgotten he could not work uncovered.