round, the splash of light from the bar in one corner, the gliding
circumambient throng among the pillars and, displayed along the barrier,
the bright-hued ladies like sea-anemones--there was nothing that spoiled
the comparison. Moreover, the longer Michael looked, the more nearly was
the effect achieved. At intervals women whose close-fitting dresses
seemed deliberately to imitate scales went by: and generally the people
eyed one another with the indifferent frozen eyes of swimming fish.
There was indeed something cold-blooded in the very atmosphere, and it
was from, this rapacious and vivid shoal of women that he was expecting
Lily to materialize. Yet he was better able to imagine her in the luxury
of the Orient than sleeping down the sun over a crumpled novelette in
such a room as Poppy's in Camden Town.

The evening wore itself away, and the motion in that subaqueous air was
restful in its continuity. Michael was relieved by the assurance that he
had still a little time in which to compose himself to face the shock he
knew he must ultimately expect from meeting Lily again. The evening wore
itself away. The lady of the haute ecole was succeeded by a band of
Caucasian wrestlers, by a troupe of Bolivian gymnasts, by half a dozen
cosmopolitan ebullitions of ingenuity. The ballet went its mechanical
course, and as each line of dancers grouped themselves, it was almost
possible to hear the click of the kaleidoscope's shifting squares and
lozenges. Michael wondered vaguely about the girls in the ballet and
whether they were happy. It seemed absurd to think that down there on
the stage there were eighty or ninety individuals each with a history,
so little more did they seem from here than dolls. And on the Promenade
where it was quite certain that every woman had a history to account for
her presence there, how utterly living had quenched life. The ballet was
over, and he passed out into the streets.

For a fortnight Michael came every evening to the Orient without finding
Lily. They were strange evenings, these that were spent in the heart of
London without meeting anyone he knew. It was no doubt by the merest
chance that none of his friends saw him at the Orient, and yet he began
to fancy that actually every evening he did, as it were, by some
enchantment fade from the possibility of recognition. He felt as if his
friends would not perceive his presence, so much would they in that
circumambient throng take on the characte