house, but Mrs Verloc's mother was confined to two back
rooms on the first floor. The luckless Stevie slept in one of them. By
this time a growth of thin fluffy hair had come to blur, like a golden
mist, the sharp line of his small lower jaw. He helped his sister with
blind love and docility in her household duties. Mr Verloc thought that
some occupation would be good for him. His spare time he occupied by
drawing circles with compass and pencil on a piece of paper. He applied
himself to that pastime with great industry, with his elbows spread out
and bowed low over the kitchen table. Through the open door of the
parlour at the back of the shop Winnie, his sister, glanced at him from
time to time with maternal vigilance.

CHAPTER II

Such was the house, the household, and the business Mr Verloc left behind
him on his way westward at the hour of half-past ten in the morning. It
was unusually early for him; his whole person exhaled the charm of almost
dewy freshness; he wore his blue cloth overcoat unbuttoned; his boots
were shiny; his cheeks, freshly shaven, had a sort of gloss; and even his
heavy-lidded eyes, refreshed by a night of peaceful slumber, sent out
glances of comparative alertness. Through the park railings these
glances beheld men and women riding in the Row, couples cantering past
harmoniously, others advancing sedately at a walk, loitering groups of
three or four, solitary horsemen looking unsociable, and solitary women
followed at a long distance by a groom with a cockade to his hat and a
leather belt over his tight-fitting coat. Carriages went bowling by,
mostly two-horse broughams, with here and there a victoria with the skin
of some wild beast inside and a woman's face and hat emerging above the
folded hood. And a peculiarly London sun--against which nothing could be
said except that it looked bloodshot--glorified all this by its stare.
It hung at a moderate elevation above Hyde Park Corner with an air of
punctual and benign vigilance. The very pavement under Mr Verloc's feet
had an old-gold tinge in that diffused light, in which neither wall, nor
tree, nor beast, nor man cast a shadow. Mr Verloc was going westward
through a town without shadows in an atmosphere of powdered old gold.
There were red, coppery gleams on the roofs of houses, on the corners of
walls, on the panels of carriages, on the very coats of the horses, and
on the broad back of Mr Verloc's overcoat, where they p