apers that resembled stiff, dirty
rags of greenish, pinkish, or whitish colour. Alvan Hervey stepped out
with the rest, a smouldering cigar between his teeth. A disregarded
little woman in rusty black, with both arms full of parcels, ran along
in distress, bolted suddenly into a third-class compartment and the
train went on. The slamming of carriage doors burst out sharp and
spiteful like a fusillade; an icy draught mingled with acrid fumes swept
the whole length of the platform and made a tottering old man, wrapped
up to his ears in a woollen comforter, stop short in the moving throng
to cough violently over his stick. No one spared him a glance.

Alvan Hervey passed through the ticket gate. Between the bare walls of
a sordid staircase men clambered rapidly; their backs appeared
alike--almost as if they had been wearing a uniform; their indifferent
faces were varied but somehow suggested kinship, like the faces of a
band of brothers who through prudence, dignity, disgust, or foresight
would resolutely ignore each other; and their eyes, quick or slow; their
eyes gazing up the dusty steps; their eyes brown, black, gray, blue, had
all the same stare, concentrated and empty, satisfied and unthinking.

Outside the big doorway of the street they scattered in all directions,
walking away fast from one another with the hurried air of men fleeing
from something compromising; from familiarity or confidences; from
something suspected and concealed--like truth or pestilence. Alvan
Hervey hesitated, standing alone in the doorway for a moment; then
decided to walk home.

He strode firmly. A misty rain settled like silvery dust on clothes,
on moustaches; wetted the faces, varnished the flagstones, darkened the
walls, dripped from umbrellas. And he moved on in the rain with careless
serenity, with the tranquil ease of someone successful and disdainful,
very sure of himself--a man with lots of money and friends. He was tall,
well set-up, good-looking and healthy; and his clear pale face had under
its commonplace refinement that slight tinge of overbearing
brutality which is given by the possession of only partly difficult
accomplishments; by excelling in games, or in the art of making money;
by the easy mastery over animals and over needy men.

He was going home much earlier than usual, straight from the City and
without calling at his club. He considered himself well connected, well
educated and intelligent. Who doesn't? But his co