V On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a fine night with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out to walk home to his rooms in Duke Street, St. He was so much in love with the mere streets, the mere clatter of the omnibuses and shimmer of the lamps, after his long absence, that every step was pleasure. At the top of Grosvenor Place he stood still awhile only to snuff up the soft, rainy air, or to delight his eye now with the shining pools which some showers of the afternoon had left behind them on the pavement, and now with the light veil of fog which closed in the distance of Piccadilly. As for him, dried and wilted by long years of cloudless heat, he drank up the moisture and the mist with a kind of physical passion-the noises and the lights no less. And when he had resumed his walk along the crowded street, the question buzzed within him, whether he must indeed go back to his exile, either at Teheran, or nearer home, in some more exalted post. That way lies the end. To slacken the rush of life, for men of his sort, is to call on death-death, the secret pursuer, who marvels agents of s h i e l d s02 deejayahmed not far from each one of us.