"This, madam, is Fareham House," said the boatman, holding out his hand for
his fee.
He charged treble the sum he would have asked half a year ago. In this time
of evil those intrepid spirits who still plied their trades in the tainted
city demanded a heavy fee for their labour; and it would have been hard to
dispute their claim, since each man knew that he risked his life, and that
the limbs which toiled to-day might be lifeless clay to-night. There was
an awfulness about the time, a taste and odour of death mixed with all the
common things of daily life, a morbid dwelling upon thoughts of corruption,
a feverish expectancy of the end of all things, which no man can rightly
conceive who has not passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Angela paid the man his price without question. She stepped lightly from
the boat, while he deposited her two small leather-covered trunks on the
stone landing-place in front of the Italian terrace which occupied the
whole length of the facade. She went up a flight of marble steps, to a door
facing the river. Here she rang a bell which pealed long and loud over the
quiet water, a bell that must have been heard upon the Surrey shore.
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