hideousness besmirched
the everlasting masterpieces, their restlessness troubled the god's
immortal repose. He went into another room and here there was hardly
anyone. Philip sat down wearily. His nerves were on edge. He could not get
the people out of his mind. Sometimes at Lynn's they affected him in the
same way, and he looked at them file past him with horror; they were so
ugly and there was such meanness in their faces, it was terrifying; their
features were distorted with paltry desires, and you felt they were
strange to any ideas of beauty. They had furtive eyes and weak chins.
There was no wickedness in them, but only pettiness and vulgarity. Their
humour was a low facetiousness. Sometimes he found himself looking at them
to see what animal they resembled (he tried not to, for it quickly became
an obsession,) and he saw in them all the sheep or the horse or the fox or
the goat. Human beings filled him with disgust.

But presently the influence of the place descended upon him. He felt
quieter. He began to look absently at the tombstones with which the room
was lined. They were the work of Athenian stone masons of the fourth and
fifth centuries before Christ, and they were very simple, work of no great
talent but with the exquisite spirit of Athens upon them; time had
mellowed the marble to the colour of honey, so that unconsciously one
thought of the bees of Hymettus, and softened their outlines. Some
represented a nude figure, seated on a bench, some the departure of the
dead from those who loved him, and some the dead clasping hands with one
who remained behind. On all was the tragic word farewell; that and nothing
more. Their simplicity was infinitely touching. Friend parted from friend,
the son from his mother, and the restraint made the survivor's grief more
poignant. It was so long, long ago, and century upon century had passed
over that unhappiness; for two thousand years those who wept had been dust
as those they wept for. Yet the woe was alive still, and it filled
Philip's heart so that he felt compassion spring up in it, and he said:

"Poor things, poor things."

And it came to him that the gaping sight-seers and the fat strangers with
their guide-books, and all those mean, common people who thronged the
shop, with their trivial desires and vulgar cares, were mortal and must
die. They too loved and must part from those they loved, the son from his
mother, the wife from her husband; and perhaps it was m