The things we are Author:John Middleton Murry Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE HAVEN " Je suis peut-Stre le seul homme au monde qui sache que ces personnes ont existe."—Chateaubriand. AT eight o'clock in the morning... more » he awoke to the sound of gently falling rain ; it dripped lazily into the gutter outside his window. A half-dozen dead moths were strewn round his burnt-out candle That was as it should be. But the rain was not. He had no clothes for rain ; he had no clothes at all. He jumped out of bed anxiously and looked at his collar in dismay. How detestable a grubby collar was! Without reflecting he plunged it into the basin and covered it with soapsuds. Then it was too late to draw back. He rubbed it clean, rinsed it in fresh water, and looked at it ruefully. Would it ever dry in that rain ? Still, he had had the sense to hang his shirt by the window. That was tolerably freshanyhow. There were people who, finding themselves without pyjamas, slept in their shirts—an awful habit! He washed himself elaborately, even more elaborately than usual. It was an extremely complicated bath, a minute prophylactic against yesterday's linen. " If something remains to be done, nothing is done," he murmured. He squatted on the bed and diligently scrubbed his feet with a nail-brush that had been left in the room. He was quite disproportionately grateful for that nail-brush. When he had finished, he stood still and expanded his chest in front of the window twenty-four times. Then he dressed. All went well. If his clothes were not absolutely fresh, they were fresher than he had hoped; and by good luck he had brought a silk handkerchief. Draped about his neck, it looked very intentional. He brushed his hair with the nail-brush. But for his beard he would have been happy. Twenty past nine ! He should have left his rooms on the way to Cado...« less