he other passengers had
disappeared. The exclusive ozone was heavy with exciting romance for Mr.
Prohack as the station staff considered his unique and incomprehensible
case. Then a tiny omnibus materialised out of the night.

"Is this the Majestic bus?" Mr. Prohack enquired of the driver.

"Well, it is if you like, sir," the driver answered.

Mr. Prohack did like....

The Majestic was large and prim, resembling a Swiss hotel in its
furniture, the language and composition of the menu, the dialect of the
waiters; but it was about fifteen degrees colder than the highest hotel
in Switzerland. The dining-room was shaded with rose-shaded lamps and it
susurrated with the polite whisperings of elegant couples and trios, and
the entremet was cabinet pudding: a fine display considering the depth
of winter and of the off-season.

Mr. Prohack went off after dinner for a sharp walk in the east wind.
Solitude! Blackness! Night! East wind in the bushes of gardens that
shielded the facades of large houses! Not a soul! Not a policeman! He
descended precariously to the vast, smooth beach. The sound of the sea!
Romance! Mr. Prohack seemed to walk for miles, like Ozymandias, on the
lone and level sands. Then he fancied he descried a moving object. He
was not mistaken. It approached him. It became a man and a woman. It
became a man and a young woman arm-in-arm and soul-in-soul. And there
was nothing but the locked couple, and the sound of the invisible,
immeasurable sea, and the east wind, and Mr. Prohack. Romance thrilled
through Mr. Prohack's spine.

"So I said to him," the man was saying to the young woman as the pair
passed Mr. Prohack, "I said to him 'I could do with a pint o' that,' I
said."

III

The next morning Mr. Prohack rose with alacrity from a hard bed, and was
greeted in the hall by the manager of the hotel, an enormous,
middle-aged, sun-burnt, jolly person in flannels and an incandescent
blazer, who asked him about his interests in golf and hard-court tennis.
Mr. Prohack, steeped as he felt himself to be in strange romance, was
prepared to be interested in these games, but the self-protective
instinct warned him that since these games could not be played alone
they would, if he indulged in them, bring him into contact with people
who might prove tedious. He therefore changed the conversation and asked
whether he could have strawberry jam to his breakfast. The manager's
face instantly changed, hardening to