“Of course I will, dear Marion.” I smiled as I took her arm and inclined my head in the most humbly deferential of gestures. Even duchesses of the blood royal would have been satisfied with my observance of gallant protocol.

“I did not ask for the support of your arm, sir,” she gave me a glacial look as she promptly disengaged her rounded arm, while a look of annoyance made her cheeks flush with anger. “Merely come with me and see that I am properly out of your abode, inside which I never mean to set foot again.”

Now, to the right of my sitting room on which the main door to my apartment opens, was the door of the Snuggery. It had doors at each end, and the room was nearly square, of an excellent size and quite lofty. The walls, however, were unbroken, save by the one entrance, as light and air came in from a lantern which occupied the greater part of the roof, and was supported by four strong and stout wooden pillars. The walls were thickly padded, with iron rings let into them at regular distances all around in two rows, one close to the floor and the other about a height of eight feet. From the roof beams dangled rope pulleys in pairs between the pillars; while the two recesses on the entrance side which were caused by the projection of the passage into the room looked as if they had at once time been separated from the rest of the room by bars, as if they were cells at one time. This of course, as I have already indicated and which information I gathered from my landlord at the time when he let my rooms, had come about because the house had initially been used as a private asylum for the mentally unbalanced. It was grim, ironic justice, I thought, that Marion should now make the acquaintance of the Snuggery, because in my estimation she was emotionally unbalanced! I had had the floor covered with thick Persian carpets and rugs, and the two alcoves converted into nominal photographic laboratories, but in a way that had made them suitable for lavatories and dressing rooms.