ord. I could not find any. By chance I took
hold of the tassel, and with the click of a spring the blind ran up.

I found myself looking out upon a scene that was altogether strange to me.
The night was overcast, and through the flocculent grey of the heaped
clouds there filtered a faint half-light of dawn. Just at the edge of the
sky the cloud-canopy had a blood-red rim. Below, everything was dark and
indistinct, dim hills in the distance, a vague mass of buildings running
up into pinnacles, trees like spilt ink, and below the window a tracery of
black bushes and pale grey paths. It was so unfamiliar that for the moment
I thought myself still dreaming. I felt the toilet-table; it appeared to
be made of some polished wood, and was rather elaborately furnished--there
were little cut-glass bottles and a brush upon it. There was also a queer
little object, horse-shoe shape it felt, with smooth, hard projections,
lying in a saucer. I could find no matches nor candlestick.

I turned my eyes to the room again. Now the blind was up, faint spectres
of its furnishing came out of the darkness. There was a huge curtained
bed, and the fireplace at its foot had a large white mantel with something
of the shimmer of marble.

I leant against the toilet-table, shut my eyes and opened them again, and
tried to think. The whole thing was far too real for dreaming. I was
inclined to imagine there was still some hiatus in my memory, as a
consequence of my draught of that strange liqueur; that I had come into my
inheritance perhaps, and suddenly lost my recollection of everything since
my good fortune had been announced. Perhaps if I waited a little, things
would be clearer to me again. Yet my dinner with old Elvesham was now
singularly vivid and recent. The champagne, the observant waiters, the
powder, and the liqueurs--I could have staked my soul it all happened a
few hours ago.

And then occurred a thing so trivial and yet so terrible to me that I
shiver now to think of that moment. I spoke aloud. I said, "How the devil
did I get here?" ... _And the voice was not my own_.

It was not my own, it was thin, the articulation was slurred, the
resonance of my facial bones was different. Then, to reassure myself I ran
one hand over the other, and felt loose folds of skin, the bony laxity of
age. "Surely," I said, in that horrible voice that had somehow established
itself in my throat, "surely this thing is a dream!" Almost as quickly as
if I