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The door was reclosed; and I found myself in a perfectly bare and dim passageway. From behind me came the order "Go right ahead!" Into a practically unfurnished room, lighted by one gas jet, I walked. Some coarse matting hung before the two windows and a fairly large grip stood on the floor against one wall. A gas-ring was in the hearth, together with a few cheap cooking utensils.
The item of news he had felt certain would be printed in big type on the middle sheet was not there. Feeling amazingly light-hearted, almost light-headed, Bunting lit the gas-ring to make his wife her morning cup of tea. While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out: "Bunting!" she cried weakly. "Bunting!" Quickly he hurried in response to her call. "Yes," he said. "What is it, my dear?
Before she had well quitted the room he saw with clearness that he was quite the astutest man in the world, and that Helen was clay in his hands. The sound of crockery in the scullery, and the cheerful little explosion when the gas-ring was ignited, and the low mutter of conversation that ensued between Helen and Georgiana these phenomena were music to the artist in him.
Yes, it was as she had expected, a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last used the oven, and through to the stone floor below had fallen a mass of black, gluey soot. Mrs. Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous day for her own and Bunting's breakfast upstairs, and broiled them over the gas-ring in their sitting-room.
The gas-ring spurted under the match in her hand, lighting up with a bluish light her pale, thin face. Her lips moved as she murmured to herself for comfort: "The same yesterday, to-day and for ever." But she could not find anything to hold on to in that any more. Then she heard an unexpected sound at the door, and the next minute Caroline came in, drawing off her gloves.
She thought of it, still smiling; but the required ecstasy, that would reconcile her to her hopeless life, did not come. She waited for it with a canny look as she did at home when she held a match to the gas-ring to see if there was another shilling needed in the slot. The light did not come. By every evidence of her sense she was in the completest darkness.
It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work. Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light.
On Sundays, you dine sumptuously at home on a chop, or eggs and bacon, cooked over your gas-ring, and eaten with the leisure which such luxury deserves. Tea, which if you are in Celia's case, you take at home, consists of the remains of the loaf and the milk left from breakfast, enhanced by a sausage "Made in Germany," or, say, for a change, half a haddock, twopence.
My colleague was evidently still at work in the laboratory, and, from the circumstance that the tea-things were set out on the table and a kettle of water placed in readiness on the gas-ring by the fireplace, I gathered that Polton also was full of business and anxious not to be disturbed.
Even her refined mind had busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem so frequently presented to it by Bunting for Bunting, now that they were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in "The Avenger" and his doings. She took the kettle off the gas-ring. "It's a pity Bunting isn't here," she said, drawing in her breath.
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