The roads were covered with a very even, very thin coating of mud; it was as though a corps¹ of highly skilled house-painters had laid on the mud, and just vanished. The pavements had a kind of yellowish-brown varnish². Each of the few trees that could be seen—and there were a few—carried about six surviving leaves. The sky was of a blue-black with golden rents and gleams that travelled steadily³ eastwards⁴. Except the man with newspapers at the corner of Alexandra Grove⁵, scarcely a sign of life showed along the vistas⁶ of Fulham Road; but the clock over the jeweller's was alive and bearing the usual false witness. From the upper open galleries of the Workhouse one or two old men and old women in uniform looked down indifferently upon the free world which they had left for ever. Then an omnibus appeared faintly advancing from the beautiful grey distance of the straight and endless street. George crossed the road on his way towards Redcliffe Gardens and Earl's Court. He was very smart, indeed smarter than ever, having produced in himself quite naturally and easily a fair imitation of the elegant figures which, upon his visits to the restaurant-building in Piccadilly, he had observed airing themselves round about Bond Street. His hair was smooth like polished marble; his hat and stick were at the right angle; his overcoat was new, and it indicated the locality of his waist; the spots of colour in his attire⁷ complied with the operative decrees. His young face had in it nothing that obviously separated him from the average youth of his clothes. Nobody would have said of him, at a glance, that he might be a particularly serious individual. And most people would have  at once classed him as a callow pleasure-seeking person in the act of seeking pleasure.