ly lately I've been going to bits
again. If it weren't for you and little Miss Rand I swear I'd have gone
altogether. You _are_ a brick, Christopher. Another day I'll come to you
and tell you everything. To-night I'm simply past talking."

A servant came in and gave Christopher a note. It was from Lord John
saying that he was anxious about his mother and asking the doctor
whether he could possibly come round and see her.

Breton then said that he must go. He went, promising that he would soon
come again. When he had left the house Christopher stood, perplexed,
wondering whether he should have left him alone. Then he put on his hat
and coat and set off for 104 Portland Place.

II

Breton had, indeed, no destination. He had been frightened of a whole
evening with Christopher.

He was frightened of everything, of everybody--above all, of himself. He
found himself, with a sense of surprise, as though he were the helpless
actor in some bad dream, standing in Oxford Circus. Surely it _was_ a
dream.

The sky, grey and lowering, was yet tinged with a smoky red. He had an
overpowering sense of the minuteness of humanity, so that the crowds
crossing and recrossing the Circus seemed like tiny animals crawling
over the surface of a pond from which the water had been drained.

His old fancy of the waterways came back to him and now he thought that
Oxford Circus, often a maelstrom of tossing, whirling humanity, had run
dry and lay stagnant, filled with dying life, beneath the red-tinged
sky.

Ever lower and lower that sky seemed to fall. Theatres, restaurants on
that evening were almost deserted. People stood about in groups, saying
that soon the thunder would be upon them, wondering at this weather in
March, watching, with curious eyes, the sky.

Breton was near madness that evening. He was near madness to this
extent, that he was not certain of reality. Were those lamp-posts real?
What was the meaning of those strange high buildings in whose heart
there burnt so sinister a light? He watched them expecting that at any
moment these would burst into flame and with a screaming rattling flare
go tossing to the sky.

Near him a girl said, "All right--of course it ain't of no moment what I
might happen to pre-fere--Oh, no!"

A mild young man answered her: "Well, if yer want ter go to the Oxford
why not say so? _That's_ what I say. Why not say so 'stead of 'angin'
about----"

"Oh! 'angin' about! Say that again and off I g