Goodnight."
He went into his own room, where he found his wife still awake. Her weak
lamentings and bewailings were insupportable to him; and at three o'clock
he went downstairs, put on his boots and a light overcoat, and went out
into the dim regions of Bayswater, whence he saw the sun rise red above
the eastern roofs and chimneys, and where he walked until the first
clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels began to echo through the empty
streets, and, with faint distant cries of sweeps and milk-women, life's
chorus recommenced.
It was seven o'clock when he went back to his house, and let himself in
softly with his latchkey. He knew that he had been walking a long time,
and that he had seen the sun rise; but what streets or squares he had
been walking in he did not know. He crept upstairs to his dressing-room
with stealthy footsteps, and made an elaborate toilet. At eight o'clock
he was seated at breakfast in the hastily-arranged dining-room, with the
newspapers by the side of his cup and saucer. At nine he went into the
hall to receive Dr. Jedd and Dr. Doddleson, who arrived almost
simultaneously. His carefully-arranged hair and whiskers, his well made
unpretentious clothes, his spotless linen, would have done credit to an
archbishop. Of all the cares and calculations of his long dreary night
there was no trace, except a certain dulness in his eyes, and the dark
half-circles below them.
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