CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS after dinner, an April evening, and Gissing slipped away from the house for a stroll. He was afraid to stay in, because he knew that if he did, Fuji would ask him again to fix the dishcloth rack in the kitchen. Fuji was very short in stature, and could not reach up to the place where the rack was screwed over the sink. Like all people whose minds are very active, Gissing hated to attend to little details like this. It was a weakness in his character. Fuji had asked him six times to fix the rack, but Gissing always pretended to forget about it. To appease his methodical butler he had written on a piece of paper Fix Dishcloth Rack and pinned it on his dressing-table pincushion; but he paid no attention to the memorandum.
He went out into a green April dusk. Down by the pond piped those repeated treble whistlings: they still distressed him with a mysterious
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