You don't know the middle classes as well as I do.
Their sensibilities are jaded.

The first meridian.

Nothing better, and nothing easier, I should think." He had got up, and with his thin sensitive lips twitching humorously, watched in the glass over the mantelpiece Mr Verloc backing out of the room heavily, hat and stick in hand.

The door closed.
The footman in trousers, appearing suddenly in the corridor, let Mr Verloc another way out and through a small door in the corner of the courtyard.

The porter standing at the gate ignored his exit completely; and Mr Verloc retraced the path of his morning's pilgrimage as if in a dream--an angry dream.