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But the contrasts of which I have spoken were most singular and
puzzling. There were the bookshelves, for instance, home-made and
stained at the cost of a few pence, but filled with recent and costly
works on archaeology and ancient art. There were the objects on the
mantelpiece: a facsimile in bronze--not bronzed plaster--of the
beautiful head of Hypnos and a pair of fine Ushabti figures. There were
the decorations of the walls, a number of etchings--signed proofs, every
one of them--of Oriental subjects, and a splendid facsimile reproduction
of an Egyptian papyrus. It was incongruous in the extreme, this mingling
of costly refinements with the barest and shabbiest necessaries of life,
of fastidious culture with manifest poverty. I could make nothing of it.
What manner of man, I wondered, was this new patient of mine? Was he a
miser, hiding himself and his wealth in this obscure court? An eccentric
savant? A philosopher? Or--more probably--a crank? But at this point my
meditations were interrupted by the voice from the adjoining room, once
more raised in anger.


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