I was using the best power of my brain to keep that light and

careless talk not too obviously directed to the point that concerns

me. I had to. Ralphs' behaviour since has more than justified my

caution . . . . . Ralphs, I knew, would leave us beyond the

Kensington High Street, and then I could surprise Gurker by a

sudden frankness. One has sometimes to resort to these little

devices. . . . . And then it was that in the margin of my field of

vision I became aware once more of the white wall, the green door

before us down the road.

We passed it talking. I passed it. I can still see the

shadow of Gurker's marked profile, his opera hat tilted forward

over his prominent nose, the many folds of his neck wrap going

before my shadow and Ralphs' as we sauntered past.

"I passed within twenty inches of the door. 'If I say

good-night to them, and go in,' I asked myself, 'what will happen?'

And I was all a-tingle for that word with Gurker.

"I could not answer that question in the tangle of my other

problems. 'They will think me mad,' I thought. 'And suppose I

vanish now!--Amazing disappearance of a prominent politician!'

That weighed with me. A thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses

weighed with me in that crisis."

Then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and, speaking

The Door in the Wall And Other Stories