finishing his
dinner, when the little man, shining and dapper, pleased and impersonal,
was shown in.

"Hullo!" cried Christopher; "thought you were abroad somewhere."

"I saw you at the Duchess's funeral. Of course I was there. What do you
suppose? Meanwhile come out now and see your fine people make
manifestations."

"Is there a noise?"

"A noise! _Mon Dieu!_ But come and look!"

They went out together. Harley Street was silent and deserted and above
it a night sky, scattered with stars, was serenely still. But, beyond
the further roofs and chimneys, golden light hovered and a confused
murmur, like the buzzing of bees, hummed upon space.

Through Oxford Street a great crowd of people was passing, but it was a
crowd hurrying to find some other crowd. Oxford Street was plainly not
the meeting-place. There was a good deal of shouting and singing; young
men, five abreast, passed, girls with "ticklers" and whistles screamed
and laughed and sang; merry bells were ringing, lights flared in the
windows and now and again a rocket with a whiz and a shriek flashed
into the sky and broke with a little angry splutter into coloured stars.

They crossed into Bond Street, down which other people were hurrying;
sometimes a roaring echo of a multitude of discordant voices would be
carried to them and then would be hidden again as though some huge door
in front of them were swinging to and fro.

At the end of Bond Street, suddenly, as they might turn the corner of
some sea road and, instantly, be confronted with the crash of a plunging
surf, they met the crowd.

"Look out!" cried Brun, clutching hold of Christopher's arm. "We don't
want to get drawn into this!"

Although they had apparently been walking quietly down Bond Street with
no crowd about them, they now were pursued, upon all sides, by people.
They raised themselves on to a doorstep, hanging there, bending their
feet forward, and feeling that if the crowd in front of them were for a
moment to give way down they would go!

Meanwhile, along Piccadilly, towards the clubs and Hyde Park Corner, a
thick mass of human beings was pressing. This gathering seemed, of
itself, to lack all human quality.

A face, a voice, a hand, a cry----these things might now and again, as
fish flash in a stream, detach themselves; sometimes a light from a
flaring window or an illumination would fling into pale, unreal relief a
bundle of faces that represented, at that instant, a piece of h