you have
farther up the house, Mrs.--," and then, as if making a prodigious
mental effort, he brought out her name, "Bunting," with a kind of
gasp.

The two top rooms were, of course, immediately above the
drawing-room floor. But they looked poor and mean, owing to the fact
that they were bare of any kind of ornament. Very little trouble had
been taken over their arrangement; in fact, they had been left in much
the same condition as that in which the Buntings had found them.

For the matter of that, it is difficult to make a nice, genteel
sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features
are a sink and a big gas stove. The gas stove, of an obsolete
pattern, was fed by a tiresome, shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
It had been the property of the people from whom the Buntings had
taken over the lease of the house, who, knowing it to be of no
monetary value, had thrown it in among the humble fittings they
had left behind.

What furniture there was in the room was substantial and clean, as
everything belonging to Mrs. Bunting was bound to be, but it was a
bare, uncomfortable-looking place, and the landlady now felt sorry
that she had done nothing to make it appear more attractive.

To her surprise, however, her companion's dark, sensitive,
hatchet-shaped face became irradiated with satisfaction. "Capital!
Capital!" he exclaimed, for the first time putting down the bag he
held at his feet, and rubbing his long, thin hands together with a
quick, nervous movement.

"This is just what I have been looking for." He walked with long,
eager strides towards the gas stove. "First-rate--quite first-rate!
Exactly what I wanted to find! You must understand, Mrs.--er--
Bunting, that I am a man of science. I make, that is, all sorts of
experiments, and I often require the--ah, well, the presence of
great heat."

He shot out a hand, which she noticed shook a little, towards the
stove. "This, too, will be useful--exceedingly useful, to me," and
he touched the edge of the stone sink with a lingering, caressing
touch.

He threw his head back and passed his hand over his high, bare
forehead; then, moving towards a chair, he sat down--wearily.
"I'm tired," he muttered in a low voice, "tired--tired! I've been
walking about all day, Mrs. Bunting, and I could find nothing to sit
down upon. They do not put benches for tired men in the London
streets. They do so on the Continent. In some ways they are far
more humane on t