spot, though I do not suppose I had passed a dozen people on my way;
and then I set to work to find my way back to Paddington.

I thought I had taken the road by which I had come, but the half light
must have deceived me. Not that it mattered. They had a lurking
mystery about them, these silent streets with their suggestion of
hushed movement behind drawn curtains, of whispered voices behind the
flimsy walls. Occasionally there would escape the sound of laughter,
suddenly stifled as it seemed, and once the sudden cry of a child.

It was in a short street of semi-detached villas facing a high blank
wall that, as I passed, I saw a blind move half-way up, revealing a
woman's face. A gas lamp, the only one the street possessed, was
nearly opposite. I thought at first it was the face of a girl, and
then, as I looked again, it might have been the face of an old woman.
One could not distinguish the colouring. In any case, the cold, blue
gaslight would have made it seem pallid.

The remarkable feature was the eyes. It might have been, of course,
that they alone caught the light and held it, rendering them uncannily
large and brilliant. Or it might have been that the rest of the face
was small and delicate, out of all proportion to them. She may have
seen me, for the blind was drawn down again, and I passed on.

There was no particular reason why, but the incident lingered with me.
The sudden raising of the blind, as of the curtain of some small
theatre, the barely furnished room coming dimly into view, and the
woman standing there, close to the footlights, as to my fancy it
seemed. And then the sudden ringing down of the curtain before the
play had begun. I turned at the corner of the street. The blind had
been drawn up again, and I saw again the slight, girlish figure
silhouetted against the side panes of the bow window.

At the same moment a man knocked up against me. It was not his fault.
I had stopped abruptly, not giving him time to avoid me. We both
apologised, blaming the darkness. It may have been my fancy, but I had
the feeling that, instead of going on his way, he had turned and was
following me. I waited till the next corner, and then swung round on
my heel. But there was no sign of him, and after a while I found
myself back in the Edgware Road.

Once or twice, in idle mood, I sought the street again, but without
success; and the thing would, I expect, have faded from my memory, but
that one e