By that time he was no longer in heaven. As a matter of fact, he had fallen out of paradise in Portland Place. It was there he suddenly remembered Cora. For several enchanted hours he had completely forgotten her. He had been in Elysium, but almost opposite the Queen's Hall he fell out of it. It was there the unwelcome truth came upon him that he had been surrendering himself to madness.
He clenched his teeth as if he had received a blow in the face. He was like an ill-found ship wrenched from its moorings and cast adrift in mid-ocean. God in heaven, how was he to go home to that unspeakable woman after such a draught of sheer delight!
For a moment, standing dazed and breathless in the middle of the road, he almost wanted to shriek. He had been drinking champagne, not with undignified freedom, yet for unseasoned temperaments it may be a dangerous beverage even in modest quantities. He had really drunk very little, but he felt that in the situation he had now to face it would have been better to have left it alone.
How was he going to face Cora now he had seen the péri, now he had looked within the Enchanted Gates?
There was only one possible answer to the question. And that had come to him as he had crossed, quite unnecessarily, the Marylebone Road, and had fetched up against the railings of Regent's Park. He must accept the issue like a man. Setting his teeth anew, he moved in an easterly direction towards the Euston Road.
He allowed himself to hope, as he turned the latchkey in the door of No. 106, King John's Mansions, that Cora had not carried out her threat. But he was not able to build much upon it. As he climbed up slowly towards the roof of the flats there seemed something indescribably squalid about the endless flights of bleak, iron-railed stone stairs.
When the door of No. 106 opened to his latchkey, the first thing he perceived was a stealthy reek of alcohol. A light was in the passage; and then as he closed the outer door, he caught an oddly unexpected sound of voices coming through the half open door of the sitting-room. He stood and listened tensely. One of the voices was that of a man.
It was not necessary to enter the sitting-room itself to confirm this fact. A man's hat, one of the sort called a gibus, which he knew was only worn with evening clothes, was hanging on one of the pegs in the passage. An overcoat lined with astrachan was under it.
He could hear a strange voice coming from the sitting-room. It was that of a man of education, but it had a sort of huskiness which betrayed the familiar presence of alcohol. Involuntarily, he stood to listen at the half open door.
"Cora, old girl, you are as tight as a tick." After all, the tones were more, sober than drunk. "I'll be getting a move on, I think. I'll soon be as bad as you, and then I won't be able to, I expect."