"
"Yes, I want to see the last of him. But the boy, where's he to sleep?"
"We can lay a mattress down in my room--an old woman like me, it don't
matter."
Sunday morning was harsh and cold, and when she came out of South
Kensington Station a fog was rising in the squares, and a great whiff of
yellow cloud drifted down upon the house-tops. In the Fulham road the tops
of the houses disappeared, and the light of the third gas-lamp was not
visible.
"This is the sort of weather that takes them off. I can hardly breathe it
myself."
Everything was shadow-like; those walking in front of her passed out of
sight like shades, and once she thought she must have missed her way,
though that was impossible, for her way was quite straight.... Suddenly
the silhouette of the winged building rose up enormous on the sulphur sky.
The low-lying gardens were full of poisonous vapour, and the thin trees
seemed like the ghosts of consumptive men. The porter coughed like a dead
man as she passed, and he said, "Bad weather for the poor sick ones
upstairs."
She was prepared for a change for the worse, but she did not expect to see
a living man looking so like a dead one.
He could no longer lie back in bed and breathe, so he was propped up with
pillows, and he looked even as shadow-like as those she had half seen in
the fog-cloud.
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