It was incredible that just outside lay the world's biggest city, with all its poverty and wealth, its sorrows and joys, its roar and rattle.

Here was a garden for Jane Austen to people with fine ladies and courtly gentlemen--here was a garden to dream in, to adore and to cherish.
When Walters came back to tell me that his wife was uncertain as to the exact date when the captain would return, I began to rave about that courtyard.

At once he was my friend.

I had been looking for quiet lodgings away from the hotel, and I was delighted to find that on the second floor, directly under the captain's rooms, there was a suite to be sublet.
Walters gave me the address of the agents; and, after submitting to an examination that could not have been more severe if I had asked for the hand of the senior partner's daughter, they let me come here to live.
The garden was mine! And the captain?
Three days after I arrived I heard above me, for the first time, the tread of his military boots.

Now again my courage began to fail.