nkable." The band is playing; and when the
crash comes it will not stop. No; it will play this music, this, which
is in my ears. Is it Gounod's "Faust" or an Anglican hymn? No matter! It
is the same thing, sentimental, and not imaginative. And sentimentally,
not imaginatively, the Englishman will die. He will not face the event,
but he will stand up to it. He will realise nothing, but he will shrink
from nothing. Of all the stories about the loss of the _Titanic_ the
best and most characteristic is that of the group of men who sat
conversing in the second-class smoking-room, till one of them said, "Now
she's going down. Let's go and sit in the first-class saloon." And they
did. How touching! How sublime! How English! The _Titanic_ sinks. With a
roar the machinery crashes from stem to bow. Dust on the water, cries on
the water, then vacuity and silence. The East has swept over this colony
of the West. And still its generations pass on, rhythmically swinging;
slaves of Nature, not, as in the West, rebels against her; cyclical as
her seasons and her stars; infinite as her storms of dust; identical as
the leaves of her trees; purposeless as her cyclones and her
earthquakes.

The music stops and I rub my eyes. Yes, it is only the club, only tea
and twaddle! Or am I wrong? There is more in these men and women than
appears. They stand for the West, for the energy of the world, for all,
in this vast Nature, that is determinate and purposive, not passively
repetitionary. And if they do not know it, if they never hear the strain
that transposes them and their work into a tragic dream, if tennis is
tennis to them, and a valse a valse, and an Indian a native, none the
less they are what a poet would see them to be, an oasis in the desert,
a liner on the ocean, ministers of the life within life that is the
hope, the inspiration, and the meaning of the world. In my heart of
hearts I apologise as I prolong the banalities of parting, and almost
vow never again to abuse Gounod's music.

V

A MYSTERY PLAY

A few lamps set on the floor lit up the white roof. On either side the
great hall was open to the night; and now and again a bird flew across,
or a silent figure flitted from dark to dark. On a low platform sat the
dancers, gorgeously robed. All were boys. The leader, a peacock-fan
flashing in his head-dress, personated Krishna. Beside him sat Rhada,
his wife. The rest were the milkmaids of the legend. They sat like
statue