He leaned out of one of the windows. A sharp scent of jonquils was wafted up from some flowerbed below; but the night was so dark he could see nothing except a row of what looked like poplar-trees and a clump of thick bushes.

He quickly unpacked his clothes and put them away in easily-opening, agreeably-papered drawers. There was a vase of rust-tinted polyanthuses on the dressing-table; and he thought to himself, “The poet’s mother knows how to manage things!”

He decided at first to confine himself to a dinner-jacket; but realizing that he had only one pair of black trousers, and that these went best with the tailcoat, he changed his mind and put on full evening-dress.

As he finally tied his white tie into a bow at the small mahogany-framed looking-glass, he could not help thinking of the many unknown events that would occupy his thoughts as he stood just there in future days⁠—events that were only now so many airy images, floating, drifting, upon the sea of the unborn.