"Yet the rent is low?" Iglesias said. "Very low for so genteel a district--I am a native of Kensington, 'the royal village,' myself, sir--and no premium is asked." Now, sitting on the uneasy bench upon the confines of Barnes Common--while the little many-millioned world, which works, in gangs, and groups, and amatory couples, and somewhat foot-weary family parties, sauntered by--that same oppression of faintness came over Dominic Iglesias, along with a great nostalgia for the cool, dusky, low-ceilinged rooms, and the neglected yet still bravely blossoming garden of the little house in Holland Street. "It would be pleasant to spend one's last days and draw one's last breath there," Iglesias said to himself; "when the sum of endeavour is complete, when the last cable has been sent, the last column of figures balanced and audited, when the ledgers are closed and one's work being fairly finished one is free to sit still and listen--not fearfully, but with reverent curiosity--for the footsteps of Death and the secrets he has in his keeping." And there he paused, for the scorched dusty land and pale dense sky, even the rusty white summits of the great range of cloud, slowly, slowly climbing high heaven--even the light dresses of passing women and children--went suddenly black, indistinct, and confused to his sight, so that he seemed to be falling through some depth of dark and untenanted space, while the dust, thick, stifling, clinging, fell with him, encircling, enveloping him with a horror of suffocation, of crushing, impalpable, yet unescapable, dead weight. Then out of the darkness, out of the dust, in voluminous dusty drab motor veil and dusty drab motor coat, the Lady of the Windswept Dust herself came towards him, bringing consolation and help. CHAPTER XXXII