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HE stairs that Wat descended—

(He had been christened "Wat," not "Watson." He made it "Watson" later. I am writing of the fall of 1892, when he was twenty-odd years old.)

The stairs that Wat descended on that crucial Sunday morning had been designed by an architect who had aspired to conceal the fact that they were, after all, stairs. He had disguised them with cushioned corner-seats and stained-glass windows, with arches of fretwork and screens of spindles, with niches and turns and exaggerated landings, until they were almost wholly ornamental and honorific. They remained, however, stairs—just as the whole