hips and went back again to the sea, and the world of chess
lost sight, for ever I trust, of the most remarkable players it ever
knew, who would have altogether spoiled the game.

The Exiles Club

It was an evening party; and something someone had said to me had
started me talking about a subject that to me is full of fascination,
the subject of old religions, forsaken gods. The truth (for all
religions have some of it), the wisdom, the beauty, of the religions
of countries to which I travel have not the same appeal for me; for
one only notices in them their tyranny and intolerance and the abject
servitude that they claim from thought; but when a dynasty has been
dethroned in heaven and goes forgotten and outcast even among men,
one's eyes no longer dazzled by its power find something very wistful
in the faces of fallen gods suppliant to be remembered, something
almost tearfully beautiful, like a long warm summer twilight fading
gently away after some day memorable in the story of earthly wars.
Between what Zeus, for instance, has been once and the half-remembered
tale he is today there lies a space so great that there is no change
of fortune known to man whereby we may measure the height down which
he has fallen. And it is the same with many another god at whom once
the ages trembled and the twentieth century treats as an old wives'
tale. The fortitude that such a fall demands is surely more than
human.

Some such things as these I was saying, and being upon a subject that
much attracts me I possibly spoke too loudly, certainly I was not
aware that standing close behind me was no less a person than the
ex-King of Eritivaria, the thirty islands of the East, or I would have
moderated my voice and moved away a little to give him more room. I
was not aware of his presence until his satellite, one who had fallen
with him into exile but still revolved about him, told me that his
master desired to know me; and so to my surprise I was presented
though neither of them even knew my name. And that was how I came to
be invited by the ex-King to dine at his club.

At the time I could only account for his wishing to know me by
supposing that he found in his own exiled condition some likeness to
the fallen fortunes of the gods of whom I talked unwitting of his
presence; but now I know that it was not of himself he was thinking
when he asked me to dine at that club.

The club would have been the most imposing building in