CHAPTER XXIII

IN DRURY LANE

But you begin now to realise," said the Invisible Man, "the full

disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter--no covering--to

get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a

strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill

myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely

visible again."

"I never thought of that," said Kemp.

"Nor had I. And the snow had warned me of other dangers. I could not

go abroad in snow--it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too,

would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man--a

bubble. And fog--I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog,

a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as I went

abroad--in the London air--I gathered dirt about my ankles, floating

smuts and dust upon my skin. I did not know how long it would be

before I should become visible from that cause also. But I saw

clearly it could not be for long.

"Not in London at any rate.

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The Invisible Man