CHAPTER XVII.
It was a dark, dismal sort of an evening. A small provoking rain was falling, the trees dripped incessantly, and the mud in the Kew thoroughfares was horribly and consistently thick. I sat at the window of Tavistock Villa, watching the men returning from the city to their quiet, suburban homes. I wondered if they were glad to free themselves from the much maligned atmosphere of London for this invigorating air, or if they would have preferred the metropolis, with all its unhealthy faults, to the sedate and monotonous wholesomeness of Kew.
I would sooner live ten years in the city than fifty years in the country. I hate the balmy atmosphere of rurality; I loathe the suburban surroundings. Give me the city with its life, its motion, its meaning, its excitement. I could not sympathize with rural man.
