“Here’s your Telegraph,” she said cheerfully, tacitly disowning any property or interest in the Telegraph.  For her, newspapers were men’s toys.  She never opened a paper, never wanted to know what was going on in the world.  She was always intent upon her own affairs.  Politics—­and all that business of the mere machinery of living:  she perfectly ignored it!  She lived.  She did nothing but live.  She lived every hour.  Priam felt truly that he had at last got down to the bed-rock of life.

There were twenty pages of the Telegraph, far more matter than a man could read in a day even if he read and read and neither ate nor slept.  And all of it so soothing in its rich variety!  It gently lulled you; it was the ideal companion for a poached egg; upstanding against the coffee-pot, it stood for the solidity of England in the seas.  Priam folded it large; he read all the articles down to the fold; then turned the thing over, and finished all of them.  After communing with the Telegraph, he communed with his own secret nature, and wandered about, rolling a cigarette.  Ah!  The first cigarette!  His wanderings led him to the kitchen, or at least as far as the threshold thereof.  His wife was at work there.  Upon every handle or article that might soil she put soft brown paper, and in addition she often wore house-gloves; so that her hands remained immaculate; thus during the earlier hours of the day the house, especially in the region of fireplaces, had the air of being in curl-papers.

“I’m going out now, Alice,” he said, after he had drawn on his finely polished boots.

“Very well, love,” she replied, preoccupied with her work.  “Lunch as usual.”  She never demanded luxuriousness from him.  She had got him.  She was sure of him.  That satisfied her.  Sometimes, like a simple woman who has come into a set of pearls, she would, as it were, take him out of his drawer and look at him, and put him back.

At the gate he hesitated whether to turn to the left, towards High Street, or to the right, towards Oxford Road.  He chose the right, but he would have enjoyed himself equally had he chosen the left.  The streets through which he passed were populated by domestic servants and tradesmen’s boys.  He saw white-capped girls cleaning door-knobs or windows, or running along the streets, like escaped nuns, or staring in soft meditation from bedroom windows.  And the tradesmen’s boys were continually leaping in and out of carts, or off and on tricycles, busily distributing food and drink, as though Putney had been a beleaguered city.  It was extremely interesting and mysterious—­and what made it the most mysterious was that the oligarchy of superior persons for whom these boys and girls so assiduously worked, remained invisible.  He passed a newspaper shop and found his customary delight in the placards.  This morning the Daily Illustrated announced nothing but:  “Portrait of a boy aged 12 who weighs 20 stone.”  And the Record whispered in scarlet:  “What the German said to the King.  Special.”  The Journal cried:  “Surrey’s glorious finish.”  And the Courier shouted:  “The Unwritten Law in the United States.  Another Scandal.”