At a quarter past five that day I started for Wimpole Street, filled with a sensation of strong curiosity, for which, in mental debate with myself, I could not quite satisfactorily account. It was a very ordinary matter, surely, this selling and buying of a dog. Why, then, did it seem to me an affair of importance? I asked myself that question while I waited. The only answer I could find was that the dog was a black spaniel, and that before the sad death of my friend Deeming a black spaniel, the creature that had caused the tragedy, had mysteriously complicated, and indeed altered, my pleasant relations both with him and with Vernon. But all that was a year ago. The past does not return, and therefore it was absurd to be—to be—what? What was really the exact nature of the emotion that now beset me? Had I been strictly truthful with myself I should, perhaps, have called it apprehension. But we are not always strictly truthful even with ourselves. I think that day I named it nervousness. I was nervous, out of sorts, a little bit depressed. Vernon’s _volte-face_ had surprised me. The dog’s cringing fear had made an unpleasant impression upon me. And so, now, as I drew near to Wimpole Street I was slightly strung up. That was the long and short of it. In some such fashion I think I spoke to myself, explanatorily, falsely. When I turned into Wimpole Street the image of poor Deeming was very present in my mind, and I could scarcely believe that he did not still inhabit the house to which I had come that Sunday morning. I wondered who lived there now, who was Vernon’s neighbour; and when I reached the house I looked towards it with a sad curiosity, which quickly changed to surprise. The house was transformed. Where once had been a doorstep there was now an area railing. The front door had vanished. In its place was a window, with a box in which roses and geraniums were blooming. In a moment I realised what had happened. Formerly the two houses—Nos. 300 and 301—had been one house. Since I had been there they had once more been thrown together. Vernon, then, was living now in the house that had been Deeming’s. As I grasped this fact, Vernon appeared at a window of what had been the second house. Seeing me, he smiled and waved his hand. Before I could ring, the door was opened by Cragg, his faithful man. “Glad to see you again, Sir,” said Cragg, with a respectful bow which he had learnt, I think, in Italy. He had several little foreign ways, but was extremely English in appearance—calm, solid, neat, and closely shaven. I returned his greeting and stepped in. “Ah,” I said, looking round. “So it’s all changed.” “Yes, Sir. After Doctor Deeming’s death we got rid of the old stuff, and Mr. Kersteven bought the Doctor’s house and threw the two houses into one. It’s more suitable now.” “It was awful before.” “Well, Sir, it was scarcely to Mr. Kersteven’s taste. We rather roughed it for a time, Sir.”