Waydelin went back to London and I to Russia, which I shall always remember, after that terrible summer under the gold and green domes of Moscow, as the hottest country in which I have ever been. When I came back to London I thought of Waydelin, made plan after plan to visit him, when one evening in November I received a brief note in his handwriting, asking me if I would come and see him at once, as he was very ill, and wanted to see me on a matter of business. I started immediately after dinner and got to Islington a little after nine. The street was one of those drab, hopeless streets to which a Russian observer has lately attributed the 'spleen' from which all Englishmen are thought to suffer. There was a row of houses on each side of the way, every house exactly like every other house, each with its three steps leading to the door, its bow window on one side, its strip of dingy earth in which there were a few dusty stalks between the lowest step and the railing, the paint for the most part peeling off the door, the bell-handle generally hanging out from its hole in the wall. I rang at No. 3. I had to wait for some time, and then the door was opened by an impudent-looking servant girl in a very untidy dress. I asked for Waydelin. 'Mrs. Waydelin, did you say?' said the girl, leering at me; then, calling over my head to the driver of a four-wheeler which just then drew up at the door, 'Wait five minutes, will you?' she turned to me again: 'Mr. Waydelin? I don't know if you can see him.' I told her impatiently that I had come by appointment, and she held the door open for me to come in. She knocked at a room on the first floor. 'Come in,' said a shrill voice that I did not know, and I went in.
It was a bedroom; a woman, with her bodice off, was making-up in front of the glass, and in a corner, with the clothes drawn up to his chin, a man lay in bed. The cheeks were covered by a three days' beard; they were ridged into deep hollows; large eyes, very wide open, looked out under a mass of uncombed hair, and as the face turned round on the pillow and looked at me without any change of expression I recognised Peter Waydelin. The woman, seeing me in the glass, nodded at my reflection, and said, as she drew a black pencil through her eyelashes: 'You'll excuse me, won't you? I have to be at the hall in ten minutes. Don't stand on ceremony; there's Peter. He'll be glad to see you, poor dear!' She spoke in a common and affected voice, and I thought her a deplorable person, with her carefully curled yellow hair, her rouged and powdered cheeks, her mouth glistening with lip salve, her big, empty blue eyes with their blackened under-lids, her fat arms and shoulders, the tawdry finery of her costume, half on and half off the body. I moved towards the bed, and Waydelin looked up at me with a queer, mournful smile.