hearty with the weary and thirsty with the unwary.
I could, however, always order my privacy without seeming too unfriendly by looking down from my bedroom window, for whereas the windows of my sitting-room faced the public-bar of The Leather Butler and an angle of the offices of the Duke of Marlborough’s fine house, from my bedroom window I had a clear prospect of our lane. Of pests, however, there was neither sight nor sign; nor of cats, nor of men, nor of any low and usual thing; only, under the lamp at the Sheep Street end of our lane, a long, low, yellow car which shone like a battle-chariot. It was empty.
Now I am of those who are affected by motor-cars: their lines thrill me, the harmony of their colour touches me, a gallant device wins my earnest admiration so that, walking along Piccadilly, I will distress my mind by being a partisan of this one, a despiser of that one. Nor am I to be won by any cheap thing, no matter how brave-seeming it may be to the eye, how admirable in endurance;{16} but I am to be won only by the simple lines, the severe and menacing aspect, of the aces among motor-cars; for economy hath charms, but not to the eye. This car charmed the eye. Like a huge yellow insect that had dropped to earth from a butterfly civilisation, this car, gallant and suave, rested in the lowly silence of the Shepherd’s Market night. Open as a yacht, it wore a great shining bonnet, and flying over the crest of this great bonnet, as though in proud flight over the heads of scores of phantom horses, was that silver stork by which the gentle may be pleased to know that they have just escaped death beneath the wheels of a Hispano-Suiza car, as supplied to His Most Catholic Majesty.
{16}
Downwards to my door I looked, and there was a green hat before my door. The light from the one lamp in Sheep Street fell about it, and that was how I saw that it was a green hat, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn: being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hats affect pour le sport.
II
“Do you know if Mr. March is in?” asked the voice of the green hat. But I could not see her face for the shadow of the brim, for it was a piratical brim, such as might very possibly defy the burning suns of El Dorado.
I said I was not sure. I was very surprised—a caller for Gerald March! “If we look up,” I said, “we can see by his lights if he is in.” And I stepped out into the lane, and the green hat and{17} I stared up at the topmost windows of the
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