he key of his valuables (adorning his
wrist) was ever so slightly an ordeal to one of his temperament and
upbringing. To sit unsheltered in blinding steam was not amusing, though
it was exciting. But the steam-chapel (as it might be called) of the
mosque was a delight compared to the second next chapel further on,
where the woodwork of the chairs was too hot to touch and where a
gigantic thermometer informed Mr. Prohack that with only another fifty
degrees of heat he would have achieved boiling point.

He remembered that it was in this chamber he must drink iced tonic water
in quantity. He clapped his streaming hands clammily, and a tall, thin,
old man whose whole life must have been lived near boiling point,
immediately brought the draught. Short of the melting of the key of his
valuables everything possible happened in this extraordinary chamber.
But Mr. Prohack was determined to shrink from naught in the pursuit of
idleness.

And at length, after he had sat in a less ardent chapel, and in still
another chapel been laid out on a marble slab as for an autopsy and,
defenceless, attacked for a quarter of an hour by a prize-fighter, and
had jumped desperately into the ice-cold lake and been dragged out and
smothered in thick folds of linen, and finally reposed horizontal in his
original alcove,--then he was conscious of an inward and profound
conviction that true, perfect, complete and supreme idleness had been
attained. He had no care in the world; he was cut off from the world; he
had no family; he existed beatifically and individually in a sublime and
satisfied egotism.

But, such is the insecurity of human organisms and institutions, in less
than two minutes he grew aware of a strange sensation within him, which
sensation he ultimately diagnosed as hunger. To clap his hands was the
work of an instant. The oncoming attendant recited a catalogue of the
foods at his disposal; and the phrase "welsh rarebit" caught his
attention. He must have a welsh rarebit; he had not had a welsh rarebit
since he was at school. It magically arrived, on an oriental tray, set
on a low Moorish table.

Eating the most wonderful food of his life and drinking tea, he looked
about and saw that two of the unoccupied sofas in his alcove were strewn
with garments; the owners of the garments had doubtlessly arrived during
his absence in the chapels and were now in the chapels themselves. He
lay back; earthly phenomena lost their hard reality...