<000005>Shortly after midnight the Doctor's expectant ear caught the sound of someone alighting from a bicycle. A moment later footsteps clattered down the area stairs, and Gregg, still attired in his cricket flannels, appeared at the open door. The smile faded from his lips as he beheld the drawn, agitated features of the Doctor.
ONE:It was so good of you to let me come and see your books, Mr Keeling, she said. My brother has often told me what delightful Sunday afternoons he has passed with you here.I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of confronting it, was I not failing to regard that with due magnanimity? Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--
"Z 5," came the faint rejoinder, "and reverse Y 4most importantreverse Y 4."It is said by the residents of Yokohama, with whom the hotel at Totsooka is a favorite resort, that George Pauncefort stirs an omelette as though he were playing Hamlet, and his conception of Sir Peter Teazle is manifested when he prepares a glass of stimulating fluid for a thirsty patron.You said, With Alice here too,. he said. Oblige me by telling me what you mean.The Doctor drew himself up stiffly, and just perceptibly indicated the door. "I think you need a holiday," he remarked, "and a change from theological pursuits. And don't forget. Rest, for a few days, in a sitting posture.""When as soldiers it was our simple du'--"