Opposite in Flat 6, Mr. Drake. Or perhaps not. He was often out quite late-later than this. You could hear his step on the gravel before the house. She wondered if he was out now, or only away in a dream. And what would Mr. Drake’s dream be like? An odd-looking person-black eyebrows like Mephistopheles, and very thick iron-grey hair. What he did and where he went when he wasn’t in his flat, nobody seemed to know. Always very polite if you met him in the lift, but no one got farther than that. Mrs. Willard opined that he had a secret sorrow.

Up to the top of the house now. No. 7 was shut up. The Spooners were away. Mr. Spooner, torn from his warehouse (wool), his stout form most unbecomingly clothed in khaki, but still cheerful, still facetious, still talking about the “little woman.” Mrs. Spooner, in the A.T.S., youngish, prettyish, anxious, trying to be bright. Trying very hard. She came up sometimes. Perhaps her dreams were giving her back the world which had been snatched away-a little pleasant world with little gossiping bridge parties; a new frock, a new hat; going with Charlie to the pictures and coming home to a cosy little supper-a trivial world, but all she had, not to be found anywhere now except in a dream.

The eighth flat, and the last. Miss Carola Roland-stage girl with a stage name. Meade wondered what she had started with. Not Carola, and not Roland-there wasn’t any doubt about that. Whatever the pretty, pert child had been called, and whatever colour her hair had been then, at somewhere in her twenties she was still pert, still pretty, and the perfect peroxide blonde.

Meade was getting sleepy. Carola Roland-she’s frightfully pretty-wonder why she lives here-dull for her-she won’t stay-wonder why she came-wonder what she dreams about-diamonds and champagne-bubbles rising in a full golden glass-bubbles rising in the sea-the rocking of a ship… She was back in her own dream again.