# II explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Arthur Machen.

## What happens

Mr. Salisbury, a pragmatic young man, endures a dinner with Dyson filled with improbable tales. Walking home through Soho, he is caught in a storm and takes shelter in a passage. There, he witnesses a quarrel between a drunken man and a woman, who throws away a crumpled piece of paper. Salisbury retrieves it out of curiosity.

## Themes in this chapter

### The Urban Mystery

Salisbury's chance encounter in a dark Soho passage with a quarrel and a discarded paper hints at hidden stories within the city.

## Character check-ins

### Mr. Salisbury

A young gentleman of solid intellect, skeptical of Dyson's romantic tales, caught in a storm and witnesses a street quarrel.

### Mr. Dyson

Mentioned as the teller of improbable stories during dinner; Salisbury speculates on his fate.

## Key lines

> Mr. Salisbury, as may have been gathered from the few remarks which he had found it possible to introduce in the course of the evening, was a young gentleman of a peculiarly solid form of intellect, coy and retiring before the mysterious and the uncommon, with a constitutional dislike of paradox.

Salisbury is a practical, unadventurous man who avoids mystery and dislikes contradictions.

_Establishes Salisbury's character as a foil to Dyson's romanticism._

> The rain, driven by the wind, pelted down with the violence of a thunderstorm, dashing up from the stones and hissing through the air, and soon a perfect torrent of water coursed along the kennels and accumulated in pools over the choked-up drains.

A fierce storm drenches the streets, creating floods and puddles.

_Sets the atmospheric scene for Salisbury's shelter-seeking._

> She ran out and disappeared in the darkness, while the man lurched slowly into the street, grumbling indistinctly to himself in a perplexed tone of voice.

The woman flees into the night, and the drunken man stumbles away, muttering.

_End of the street quarrel; the discarded paper becomes a plot point._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_6_se/chapters/ii
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_6_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_6_se/chapters