The disease developed; he had it very badly, but at first his friends did not know. He lay awake at night hearing things—one heard much more at night—sometimes he fancied that the ground shook under his feet—but most terrible of all was it when there was perfect silence. The traffic ceased, the trees and windows and doors were still . . . the Creature was listening. Sometimes he read in papers that buildings had suddenly collapsed. He smiled to himself. “When we are all nicely gathered together,” he said, “when there are enough people . . . then—”
His friends said that he had a nervous breakdown; they sent him to a rest-cure. He came back. The Creature was fascinating—he was terrified, but he could not leave it.
He knew more and more about it; he knew now what it was like, and he saw its eyes and he sometimes could picture its grey scaly back with churches and theatres and government buildings and the little houses of Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones perched upon it—and the noises that it made now were so many and so threatening that he never slept at all. Then he began to run, shouting, down Piccadilly, so they put him—very reluctantly—into a nice Private Asylum, and there he died, screaming. This story is a prologue to Peter's life in London. . . . The story struck his fancy; he thought of it sometimes.
II
On a late stormy afternoon in November, 1895, Peter finished his book, “Reuben Hallard.” It had been raining all day, and now the windows were blurred and the sea of shining roofs that stretched into the mist emphasised the dark and gloom of the heavy overhanging sky.
Peter's little room was very cold, but his body was burning—he was in a state of overpowering excitement; his hands trembled so that he could scarcely hold his pen . . . “So died Reuben Hallard, a fool and a gentleman”—and then “Finis” with a hard straight line underneath it. . . . He had been working at it for three years, and he had been in London seven.
He walked up and down his little room, he was so hot chat he flung up his window and leaned out and let the
