It was early enough, however, when finally he rang the bell of Mrs. Herbert’s house; for the landlady, evidently just returning from eight-o’clock Mass, came up to her door at the same moment.

“Good morning, Mrs. Herbert,” he said, as pleasantly as he could. But when the woman had let him in and was proceeding to announce him, a faded picture of The Bombardment of Alexandria , hanging in her hall, brought to his mind all the lodging-houses he had ever entered! It was as if from each of these places some polished bannister-knob, some vase of dead bulrushes, some dusty ornamental chair, some vague odour of Indian spice or of dried-up seaweed, added its quota to the accumulated memory.