As the thunder rolled bumping and snarling away across the sky they saw the figure of a man appear from the darkness beyond the candle and stand pressed close to the window with arms upstretched and laid against the panes. Through the sheets of rain his face was not quite clear. But he was dark and pale and tall and shouting at the storm. So he lived there alone. The storm was a companion. He was alone and aware. Had he seen the new people across the way? A brilliant flash lit up the white face and its frame of heavy hair. The dark eyes were looking straight across. _Sayce_: and he lived _here_. Miriam drew back and sat down on the end of her bed. This queer alley was then the place in all London in which to live. He had found it for himself. Was he dismayed at the sight of philistines invading the retreat where he lived hidden amongst unseeing villagers? She vowed not again to look across when there was any sign of his presence. He should be invaded without knowing it. She would see him go in and out, see without seeing: screening him even from her own observation. And all the time his presence would cast its light upon their frontage. “The strange room,” said Miss Holland, who also had left the window, “has a tenant as eccentric as itself.” “Do you know who it _is_?” Miriam stole back to the window to learn the disposition of the door of his house. He had disappeared. It was a side door, next to the cobbler’s window, like theirs next to the stonemason’s. “It is Sayce. E. W. Sayce ... the poet.” “Indeed?” exclaimed Miss Holland delightedly. “A poet. That is charming. Quite enchanting to feel that poetry is being written so near at hand.” She was peering out, as if looking for verses on the air between the opposing windows. She had no feeling of shyness in mentioning his work. If unobserved she could catch him at it, she would note his methods. Perhaps he would sit there at work in his window. But the least they could do, having innocently become witnesses of his workshop, would be to stand off and leave him free. To disperse Miss Holland’s concentration, she rushed into speech. “I’ve known him by sight for years, wandering about in a black cloak. One night I was strolling along the strip of pavement round one of the Square gardens. It was quite dark under the trees between the stretches of lamplight, and there was nobody about. Suddenly in a patch of light I was confronted by a tall figure, also strolling. We both stood quite still, staring into each other’s eyes with thoughts far away, each taking in only the fact of an obstruction. Then I realised it was Sayce. I can’t remember how we got past each other. One of us must presently have plunged into the gutter. But, looking back, it seems as if we walked through each other.” Miss Holland produced a series of bird-like sounds, each seeming in turn to refuse to make a word. The storm was moving on and the strange light, lifting as the sky cleared, left a blankness.