faded out altogether.
Jenny's drumming and the steady sawing of the bass throbbed on, tuneless
and meaningless in their ears. Henry Wimbush halted.

"Here we are," he said, and, taking an electric torch out of his pocket,
he cast a dim beam over two or three blackened sections of tree trunk,
scooped out into the semblance of pipes, which were lying forlornly in a
little depression in the ground.

"Very interesting," said Denis, with a rather tepid enthusiasm.

They sat down on the grass. A faint white glare, rising from behind a
belt of trees, indicated the position of the dancing-floor. The music
was nothing but a muffled rhythmic pulse.

"I shall be glad," said Henry Wimbush, "when this function comes at last
to an end."

"I can believe it."

"I do not know how it is," Mr. Wimbush continued, "but the spectacle
of numbers of my fellow-creatures in a state of agitation moves in me
a certain weariness, rather than any gaiety or excitement. The fact is,
they don't very much interest me. They're aren't in my line. You follow
me? I could never take much interest, for example, in a collection of
postage stamps. Primitives or seventeenth-century books--yes. They are
my line. But stamps, no. I don't know anything about them; they're not
my line. They don't interest me, they give me no emotion. It's rather
the same with people, I'm afraid. I'm more at home with these pipes."
He jerked his head sideways towards the hollowed logs. "The trouble with
the people and events of the present is that you never know anything
about them. What do I know of contemporary politics? Nothing. What do I
know of the people I see round about me? Nothing. What they think of
me or of anything else in the world, what they will do in five minutes'
time, are things I can't guess at. For all I know, you may suddenly jump
up and try to murder me in a moment's time."

"Come, come," said Denis.

"True," Mr. Wimbush continued, "the little I know about your past is
certainly reassuring. But I know nothing of your present, and neither
you nor I know anything of your future. It's appalling; in living
people, one is dealing with unknown and unknowable quantities. One can
only hope to find out anything about them by a long series of the most
disagreeable and boring human contacts, involving a terrible expense
of time. It's the same with current events; how can I find out anything
about them except by devoting years to the most exhausting first-hand
stu