The first
few steps he walked, but, a noise in the grate startling him, he
suddenly assumed an air of the greatest gaiety, and, bowing with mock
gallantry to his trousers, he now waltzed coquettishly to the bath. It
was grim, horribly grim, and horribly hot too, for, when he felt the
temperature with one of his squat, podgy toes, it made him swear quite
involuntarily. Turning on the cold water, and slapping his thighs
playfully, he felt again. Too hot yet, far too hot even for him! He
loved heat. More cold! and he was hoisting one chubby leg to feel
again, when, a repetition of the noise in the grate making him swing
round, he lost his balance, and descended on the floor with a hard, a
very hard, bump. For some seconds he lay still, too sulky and
aggrieved even to get up, but, the draught from under the ill-fitting
door tickling his bare flesh in the most immodest fashion, he roused
himself from this lethargy, and was about to raise himself from the
floor, when the lights went out--went out without a moment's warning,
and he found himself engulfed in the most funereal darkness. To say he
was startled is to put it very mildly--he was absolutely
terror-stricken--far too terror-stricken to think of moving now, and
least of all of getting up and groping for the matches. Indeed, when
he came to think of it, he had not seen any matches in the room, and
he had not brought any with him, his wife had flurried him so much.
The moment the candles were extinguished the grimness sensibly
increased, and he could feel all around him, thickly amalgamated with
the ether, a superphysical presence, at once hostile and horrible.
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