If one were to devote one’s mental energies to speculation¹ as to what is going on behind the noncommittal fronts of any row of houses in any great city the imaginative mind might be led far. Bricks, mortar², windows, doors, steps which lead up to the threshold, are what are to be seen from the outside. Nothing particular may be transpiring³ within the walls, or tragedies, crimes, hideous⁴ suffering may be enclosed. The conclusion is obvious to banality—but as suggestive as banal—so suggestive in fact that the hyper-sensitive and too imaginative had better, for their own comfort’s sake, leave the matter alone. In most cases the existing conditions would not be altered even if one knocked at the door and insisted on entering with drawn⁵ sword in the form of attendant policeman. The outside of the slice of a house in which Feather lived was still rather fresh from its last decorative⁶ touching⁷ up. It had been painted cream colour and had white doors and windows and green window boxes with variegated⁸ vinca vines trailing from them and pink geraniums, dark blue lobelia and ferns filling the earth stuffed in by the florist⁹ who provided such adornments. Passers-by frequently glanced at it and thought it a nice little house whose amusing diminutiveness¹⁰ was a sort of attraction. It was rather like a new doll’s house.