f a little swarm of would-be reef
builders looking back at the teeming slime upon the ocean floor. All the
history of mankind, all the history of life, has been and will be
the story of something struggling out of the indiscriminated abyss,
struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend individual lives--an
effort of insidious attraction, an idea of invincible appeal. That
something greater than ourselves, which does not so much exist as seek
existence, palpitating between being and not-being, how marvellous it
is! It has worn the form and visage of ten thousand different gods,
sought a shape for itself in stone and ivory and music and wonderful
words, spoken more and more clearly of a mystery of love, a mystery
of unity, dabbling meanwhile in blood and cruelty beyond the common
impulses of men. It is something that comes and goes, like a light that
shines and is withdrawn, withdrawn so completely that one doubts if it
has ever been....

6

I would mark with a curious interest the stray country member of
the club up in town for a night or so. My mind would be busy with
speculations about him, about his home, his family, his reading, his
horizons, his innumerable fellows who didn't belong and never came up.
I would fill in the outline of him with memories of my uncle and his
Staffordshire neighbours. He was perhaps Alderman This or Councillor
That down there, a great man in his ward, J. P. within seven miles of
the boundary of the borough, and a God in his home. Here he was nobody,
and very shy, and either a little too arrogant or a little too meek
towards our very democratic mannered but still livened waiters. Was
he perhaps the backbone of England? He over-ate himself lest he should
appear mean, went through our Special Dinner conscientiously, drank,
unless he was teetotal, of unfamiliar wines, and did his best, in spite
of the rules, to tip. Afterwards, in a state of flushed repletion, he
would have old brandy, black coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the
name of temperance omit the brandy and have rather more coffee, in
the smoking-room. I would sit and watch that stiff dignity of
self-indulgence, and wonder, wonder....

An infernal clairvoyance would come to me. I would have visions of him
in relation to his wife, checking always, sometimes bullying, sometimes
being ostentatiously "kind"; I would see him glance furtively at his
domestic servants upon his staircase, or stiffen his upper lip against
the