TO
MY MOTHER
Some starlit garden grey with dew
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?
—W. L. Henley.
THE MAN WITH
THE DOUBLE HEART
PART I
"Flower o' the broom
Take away love and our earth is a tomb!"
—R. Browning.
CHAPTER I
The hour was close on midday, but the lamps in Cavendish Square shone with a blurred light through the unnatural gloom.
The fog, pouring down from Regent's Park above, was wedged tight in Harley Street like a wad of dirty wool, but in the open space fronting Harcourt House it found room to expand and took on spectral shape; dim forms with floating locks that clung to the stunted trees and, shuddering, pressed against the high London buildings which faded away indistinctly into the blackened sky.
From thence ragged pennons went busily fluttering South to be caught in the draught of the traffic in noisy Oxford Street, where hoarse and confusing cries were blent with the rumble of wheels in all the pandemonium of man at war with the elements.