Of no great size, it had evidently been furnished to minister almost entirely to the senses, and it was perhaps not surprising that I was unable to discern a single text upon its walls. Upon a parquet floor polished to a degree that was almost lascivious in its smoothness, elaborate table-legs stood reflected and a voluptuous rug or two solicited the feet. Upon the mantelpiece stood an oval mirror, indecently surrounded by likenesses of Cupid, and beside it a nude female, fashioned in bronze, was extracting a thorn from her left calf. Flushing involuntarily, I turned away from these only to observe upon a French-looking writing-table a large photograph of an elderly man, pathetically signed “Your aff. Chrysostom.” Beneath this, in a confusion that was probably characteristic, lay a half-finished letter to somebody called Loo-Loo and several others addressed to “Dearest Nina” that I did not hesitate to peruse. Most of these, as I discovered, were but little more than the vapid productions of obvious worldlings. But two were invitations to card parties and one, to my horror, contained the word “blasted.” This was the one, indeed, upon which I was engaged when the door of the room was abruptly thrown open with a lack of refinement that I ought perhaps to have expected, but that for a moment completely unnerved me. In fact it did more. For in the effort to recover myself the rug upon which I was standing slid across the floor leaving behind it not only the upper and middle but the lower middle portions of my frame. Poised in mid-air, my feet having accompanied the rug, I was entirely unable to support these, and was obliged in consequence to assume with the extremest suddenness a sedentary position upon the parquet. Nor was that all. For when, at the third attempt, I succeeded in once more standing upright, the left of my two posterior trouser-buttons fell with a sharp metallic sound upon the floor. Here it paused for a moment, and then standing upon its circumference followed the rug in the direction of Mrs. Lorton. “Dear me,” she said, “I’m afraid I interrupted you. Is this your button?” She stooped and picked it up. With a supreme effort, and despite the most poignant anguish, I regained command of myself and requested her to return it. Hardly had she done so, however, when there came a second metallic sound, and the comrade of the first button also rolled to her feet. “Oh, dear,” she said, “isn’t that the other one? What do you suppose will happen now?”