Odd and uncanny it seemed to me that he, Soames, in the flesh, in the waterproof cape, was at this moment living in the last decade of the next century, poring over books not yet written, and seeing and seen by men not yet born. 🔊 Uncannier and odder still that to-night and evermore he would be in hell. 🔊 Assuredly, truth was stranger than fiction. 🔊

Endless that afternoon was. 🔊 Almost I wished I had gone with Soames, not, indeed, to stay in the reading-room, but to sally forth for a brisk sight-seeing walk around a new London. 🔊 I wandered restlessly out of the park I had sat in. 🔊 Vainly I tried to imagine myself an ardent tourist from the eighteenth century. 🔊 Intolerable was the strain of the slow-passing and empty minutes. 🔊 Long before seven o'clock I was back at the Vingtième. 🔊

I sat there just where I had sat for luncheon. 🔊 Air came in listlessly through the open door behind me. 🔊 Now and again Rose or Berthe appeared for a moment. 🔊 I had told them I would not order any dinner till Mr. Soames came. 🔊 A hurdy-gurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noise of a quarrel between some Frenchmen farther up the street. 🔊 Whenever the tune was changed I heard the quarrel still raging. 🔊 I had bought another evening paper on my way. 🔊 I unfolded it. 🔊 My eyes gazed ever away from it to the clock over the kitchen door. 🔊

Five minutes now to the hour! 🔊 I remembered that clocks in restaurants are kept five minutes fast. 🔊 I concentrated my eyes on the paper. 🔊 I vowed I would not look away from it again. 🔊 I held it upright, at its full width, close to my face, so that I had no view of anything but it. 🔊 Rather a tremulous sheet? Only because of the draft, I told myself. 🔊