He glanced around the apartment. It was still luxurious; but "custom had staled the infinite variety" of its ornament and furnishing. Already he was dissatisfied with this and that. Where to place a new bas-relief that had struck him at Cotton's the day before, and which he had purchased on the spot, without considering that there was no room for it in the library? There it leaned against the wall,--not so big as the Vicar's family-picture, but quite as much in the way. "The room looks loaded. I ought to have a gallery for these things. I wonder if I couldn't buy Carter's house, and push a gallery through from the top of my stairway." He touched the bell, and lay down again. Martin entered softly, let down the crimson curtains, so as to exclude the vanishing light, and stirred the crimson cannel into a newer radiance. "This weather frets my nerves, Martin. My face aches. Give me the bottle of chloroform in my chamber." He inhaled the subtile fluid two or three times, and handed it back to Martin. It made no difference, he said. He would try to sleep. So Martin went out on tiptoe and closed the door. The chloroform probably did relieve him, for he thought no more of the uneasiness in his face; but he was not only not at all sleepy, but every sense seemed wide awake,--wide awake to its utmost capacity of perception. It was as if a misty veil were suddenly removed from before his eyes, and he saw, what indeed had always been there, but what in his abstraction or inattention he had never before noticed. For instance, he noticed at once that Martin had not quite closed the curtains, but had left an inch or two open, and the window open besides. The air, however, had grown soft, and the wind must have gone down, for it did not stir the drapery. He looked again, to be certain he was right. Yes,--there was an inch clear, where the wind might come in, if it liked. Martin was growing blind or stupid. However, he did not so much think that. On the whole, it was more likely that his own senses were sharpening. That would be a good thing, though,--to be wiser and sharper and clearer-sighted than all the rest of the world! He would like that advantage. And why might he not have it? Already he perceived a marked difference from his usual sensuous condition. It was unnatural, preternatural,--and yet, a state which could be produced at will. It was easily done. Just homoeopathy, in fact. A little sniff, a minute dose, and he could see and hear with a miraculous clearness; but people would take a dozen, and then they grew stupid.