That is mother-of-pearl, nacre; twilight nacre; crépuscule nacre; I must wait until it is gone. It is a visitor; pearly freshness pouring in; but if I wait I may feel different. With the blind up the lamp will be a lamp in it; twilight outside, the lamp on the edge of it, making the room gold, edged with twilight. * * * * * I _can't_ go to-night. It's all _here_; I _must_ stay here. Botheration. It's Eve's fault. Eve would rather go out and see that girl than stay here. Eve _likes_ getting tied up with people. I _won't_ get tied up; it drives everything away. Now I've read the letter I must go. There'll be afterwards when I get back. No one has any power over me. I shall be coming back. I shall always be coming back. 5 Perhaps it had been Madame Tussaud's that had made this row of houses generally invisible; perhaps their own awfulness. When she found herself opposite them, Miriam recognised them at once. By day they were one high long lifeless smoke-grimed façade fronted by gardens colourless with grime, showing at its thickest on the leaves of an occasional laurel. It had never occurred to her that the houses could be occupied. She had seen them now and again as reflectors of the grime of the Metropolitan Railway. Its smoke poured up over their faces as the smoke from a kitchen fire pours over the back of a range. The sight of them brought nothing to her mind but the inside of the Metropolitan Railway; the feeling of one's skin prickling with grime the sense of one's smoke-grimed clothes. There was nothing in that strip between Madame Tussaud's and the turning into Baker Street but the sense of exposure to grime ... a little low grimed wall surmounted by paintless sooty iron railings. On the other side of the road a high brown wall, protecting whatever was behind, took the grime in one thick covering, here it spread over the exposed gardens and façades turning her eyes away. To-night they looked almost as untenanted as she had been accustomed to think them. Here and there on the black expanse a window showed a blurred light. The house she sought appeared to be in total darkness. The iron gate crumbled harshly against her gloves as she set her weight against the rusty hinges. Gritty dust sounded under her feet along the pathway and up the shallow steps leading to the unlit doorway. 6