Unkempt women were occupying the doorstep of No. 19. St. George
accosted them and asked the way to the rooms of a Mr. Tabnit. They
smiled, displaying their wonderful teeth, consulted together, and
finally with many labials and uncouth pointings of shapely hands
they indicated the door of the "first floor front," whose wooden
shutters were closely barred. St. George led the way and entered the
bare, unclean passage where discordant voices and the odours of
cooking wrought together to poison the air. He tapped smartly at the
door.

Immediately it was opened by a graceful boy, dressed in a long,
belted coat of dun-colour. He had straight black hair, and eyes
which one saw before one saw his face, and he gravely bowed to each
of the party in turn before answering St. George's question.

"Assuredly," said the youth in perfect English, "enter."

They found themselves in an ample room extending the full depth of
the house; and partly because the light was dim and partly in sheer
amazement they involuntarily paused as the door clicked behind them.
The room's contrast to the squalid neighbourhood was complete. The
apartment was carpeted in soft rugs laid one upon another so that
footfalls were silenced. The walls and ceiling were smoothly covered
with a neutral-tinted silk, patterned in dim figures; and from a
fluted pillar of exceeding lightness an enormous candelabrum shed
clear radiance upon the objects in the room. The couches and divans
were woven of some light reed, made with high fantastic backs, in
perfect purity of line however, and laid with white mattresses. A
little reed table showed slender pipes above its surface and these,
at a touch from the boy, sent to a great height tiny columns of