However, I was in for it now. I finished my cigar, went into the bar and selected a certain bottle of whisky--the excellent Stanley had warned me that this was the landlord's bottle and of a much more reputable quality than that served to the landlord's guests. After a very moderate "nightcap" I put on carpet slippers and went up to my room, which I had chosen at the very top of the house. It was a large attic, just under the roof, and in a few days I proposed to make it more habitable with some new furniture and decoration. Meanwhile, I had chosen it because, in one corner, some wooden steps went up to a trap-door which opened on to the roof, where there was a flat space of some three yards square among the chimneys. Just before going up to bed I turned up the collar of my dressing-gown, ascended the ladder, pushed open the trap-door and stepped out on to the leads. It was a still, moonlight night. Looking over the roofs of the houses I could see the Thames winding like a silver ribbon far down below, a scene of utter tranquillity and peace. Then I wheeled round to be confronted with the great black wall which rose several yards above me, within a pistol shot of distance. But my eye traveled up beyond that and was caught in a colossal network of steel, so bold, towering and gigantic in its nearness that it almost made me reel. I stared up among the dark shadows and moonlit spaces till my eye reached an altitude which I knew to be about the height of the Golden Ball on the top of Saint Paul's Cathedral. There the vision checked. I could see a blur of low buildings, a web of latticed galleries, and I knew that I was looking only up at the very _first stage_ of the City in the Clouds, which must be lying bare to the moon some sixteen hundred feet above. I could see no more. The first stage barred all further vision, though that in itself seemed terrible in its height and majesty. So I closed my eyes and imagined only those supreme heights where she must be sleeping. "Good-night, Juanita," I murmured, and then, as I descended into my room the words of the Psalmist came to me and I said, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!" CHAPTER EIGHT On the afternoon of the next day the potman summoned me from my private room with the information that there was a young fellow from the Mile End Road to see me. "Chinese?" I asked. "Yes, sir." "Then it must be the lad come in answer to the telegram I sent to my friend this morning. Show him in."