r in that hole? I don't suppose she's got
the least notion of looking after herself. Impossible--the whole thing!
If anybody had told me that I should--that she'd--" Half of which talk
was simple bluster. The parcel was bobbing on its loop against his
side.

When he reached the top of the street he discovered that he had been
going up it instead of down it. "What am I thinking of?" he grumbled
impatiently. However, he would not turn back. He adventured forward,
climbing into latitudes whose geography was strange to him, and scarcely
seeing a single fellow-wanderer beneath the gas-lamps. Presently, after
a steep hill, he came to a churchyard, and then he redescended, and at
last tumbled into a street alive with people who had emerged from a
theatre, laughing, lighting cigarettes, linking arms. Their existence
seemed shallow, purposeless, infantile, compared to his. He felt
himself superior to them. What did they know about life? He would not
change with any of them.

Recognising the label on an omnibus, he followed its direction, and
arrived almost immediately in the vast square which contained his hotel,
and which was illuminated by the brilliant facades of several hotels.
The doors of the Royal Sussex were locked, because eleven o'clock had
struck. He could not account for the period of nearly three hours which
had passed since he left the hotel. The zealous porter, observing his
shadow through the bars, had sprung to unfasten the door before he could
ring.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SIX.

Within the hotel reigned gaiety, wine, and the dance. Small tables had
been placed in the hall, and at these sat bald-headed men, smoking
cigars and sharing champagne with ladies of every age. A white carpet
had been laid in the large smoking-room, and through the curtained
archway that separated it from the hall, Edwin could see couples
revolving in obedience to the music of a piano and a violin. One of the
Royal Sussex's Saturday Cinderellas was in progress. The self-satisfied
gestures of men inspecting their cigars or lifting glasses, of simpering
women glancing or the sly at their jewels, and of youths pulling
straight their white waistcoats as they strolled about with the air of
Don Juans, invigorated his contempt for the average existence. The
tinkle of the music appeared exquisitely tedious in its superficiality.
He could rot remain in the hall because of