He wore a very old blue raincoat and a stringy fawn scarf of the throttling variety. He was stout (the raincoat failed to button) and not tall, with copious greyish longish frizzy hair and a round face and a slightly hooked nose and big very red lips and eyes set very close together. He looked, I later thought, rather like a caricature of a bear. Real bears, I believe, have eyes rather wide apart, but caricatured bears usually have close eyes, possibly to indicate bad temper or cunning. I did not like the look of him at all. Something significantly ill-omened which I could not yet define emanated from him. And 1 could smell him from where he stood.

Perhaps I might pause here yet again for a moment to describe myself. I am thin and tall, just over six feet, fairish and not yet bald, with light fine silky rather faded straight hair. I have a bland diffident nervous sensitive face and thin lips and blue eyes. I do not wear glasses. I look considerably younger than my age.

«She's back,» I heard him say.

«What? Who's back? I do not understand you.»

«Christian's back. He's dead. She's back.»

«Christian.»

This was the name, not pronounced now in my presence for very many years, of my former wife.

I opened the door wider and the person on the step, whom I now recognized, slipped, or dodged, into the flat. I retreated into the sitting-room, he following.

«You don't remember me.»

«Yes, I do.»

«I'm Francis Marloe, you know, your brother-in-law.»

«Yes, yes-«As was, that is. I thought you should know. She's a widow, he left her everything, she's back in London, back in your old place-«Did she send you?»

«Here? Well, not exactly-«

«Did she or didn't she?»

«Well, no, I just heard through the lawyer. She's back in your old place! God!»