“Pseudo-Japanese,” he thought in a panic-stricken attempt to discredit it.

“Who looks after that?” he tossed at the youth. “The basement?”

“Yar,” said the youth.

(“He hasn’t the faintest idea,” thought Mr. Whipplestone.)

The youth had opened the front door and now stood back for Mr. Whipplestone to enter.

The little hall and stairway were carpeted in cherry red, the glossy walls were an agreeable oyster white. This scheme was continued in a quite sizable drawing-room. The two bow windows curtained in red and white stripes were large and the whole interior remarkably light for a London room. For some twenty years he had vaguely regretted the murkiness of his service flat.

Without warning he was overtaken by an experience that a less sophisticated man might have been tempted to call hallucinatory. He saw, with the utmost clarity, his own possessions occupying this lighthearted room. The Chippendale wall-desk, the crimson sofa with its companion table, the big red glass goblet, the Agatha Troy landscape, the late Georgian bookcase: all were harmoniously accommodated. When the youth opened double doors into a small dining-room, Mr. Whipplestone saw at a glance that his chairs were of precisely the right size and character.

He dismissed these visions. “The partition folds back,” he said with a brave show of indifference, “to form one room, I suppose?”

“Yar,” said the youth and folded it back. He opened red and white striped curtains in the rear wall and revealed a courtyard and tub garden.

“Lose the sun,” Mr. Whipplestone sneered, keeping his head. “Get none in the winter.”

It was, however, receiving its full quota now.

“Damp,” persisted Mr. Whipplestone defiantly. “Extra expense. Have to be kept up.” And he thought: “I’d do better to hold my tongue.”