r brought up some dishes on a tray. I sent them down
again. Then time passed and again I heard voices on the floor below.

"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?"

"What peeress?"

"Don't you remember--the one who ran away from that reprobate Raa?"

"Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now."

"Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had lived
to come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but now. . . ."

"Ah, well, that's the way, you see."

The long night passed.

Sometimes it seemed to go with feet of lead, sometimes with galloping
footsteps. I remember that the clocks outside seemed to strike every few
minutes, and then not to strike at all. At one moment I heard the bells
of a neighbouring church ringing merrily, and by that I knew it was
Christmas morning.

I did not sleep during the first hours of night, but somewhere in the
blank reaches of that short space between night and day (like the
slack-water between ebb and flow), which is the only time when London
rests, I fell into a troubled doze.

I wish I had not done so, for at the first moment of returning
consciousness I had that sense, so familiar to bereaved ones, of memory
rushing over me like a surging tide. I did not cry, but I felt as if my
heart were bleeding.

The morning dawned dark and foggy. In the thick air of my room the
window looked at me like a human eye scaled with cataract. It was my
first experience of a real London fog and I was glad of it. If there had
been one ray of sunshine that morning I think my heart would have
broken.

The cockney chambermaid came with her jug of hot water and wished me "a
merry Christmas." I did my best to answer her.

The young waiter came with my breakfast. I told him to set it down, but
I did not touch it.

Then the cockney chambermaid came back to make up my room and, finding
me still in bed, asked if I would like a fire. I answered "Yes," and
while she was lighting a handful between the two bars of my little grate
she talked of the news in the newspaper.

"It don't do to speak no harm of the dead, but as to them men as 'ad a
collusion with a iceberg in the Australier sea, serve 'em jolly well
right I say. What was they a-doing down there, risking their lives for
nothing, when they ought to have been a-thinking of their wives and
children. My Tom wanted to go for a sailor, but I wouldn't let him! Not
me! 'If you're married to a sailor,' says I, ''alf y