at he was rather fat, but I never could trace this impression to its
origin. He had not exactly a double chin, but rather a chin and a half,
and the rest of him followed this moderate example. His grey hair retired
in a pronounced estuary over each temple, leaving a beautifully brushed
peninsula between. He had no sense of humour, but hid this deformity
skillfully. Hardly anybody knew that he was a poet, except presumably his
dog. He often talked to his dog; he told it every speakable thought that
he had. This was his only bad habit. Occasionally his dog was heard to
reply in a small curious voice proceeding also from Mr. Russell.

These four people looked out at Kensington Gardens, which were rejoicing
in the very babyhood of the year. The naked trees were like pillars in
the mist, the grass was grey and whitened to the distance, the world had
mislaid its horizon, and one's eye slid up without check between the
trees to where the last word of a daylight moon whispered in the sky.

"I glory in a view that dispenses with colour," said Mrs. Gustus
severely. She always spoke as though she were sure of the whole of what
she intended to say. When she did hesitate, it only meant that she was
seeking for the simplest word, and she would cap her pause with a
monosyllable as curt as an explosion.

But glory is the right word, I think, for London in some moods. Do you
know the feeling of a heart beating too high, when you see the great
cliffs of London under rain or vague sunshine, or rising out of yellow
air? Do you ever want, as I do, to stand with arms out against the
London wind, and shout your own unmade poetry on the top of a 'bus?
With this sort of grotesque glorying does London inspire me, so that I
spend whole days together feeling that the essential _I_ is too big for
what encloses it.

Anonyma never felt like this. She often spoke the right word, but she
nearly always spoke it coldly.

"This morning," said Kew, "when I looked out, I felt the futility of bed,
so I made an assignation with the Hound when I met it 