ificance in infinity, and rather proud to be even a number. You
recognise your double on the door that has been unlocked for you. No
prisoner, clapped into his cell, could feel less personal, less
important. A notice on the wall, politely requesting you to leave your
key at the bureau (as though you were strong enough or capacious enough
to carry it about with you) comes as a pleasant reminder of your
freedom. You remember joyously that you are even free from yourself.
You have begun a new life, have forgotten the old. This mantelpiece, so
strangely and brightly bare of photographs or 'knickknacks,' is meaning
in its meaninglessness. And these blank, fresh walls, that you have
never seen, and that never were seen by any one whom you know...their
pattern is of poppies and mandragora, surely. Poppies and mandragora
are woven, too, on the brand-new Axminster beneath your elastic step.
'Come in!' A porter bears in your trunk, deposits it on a trestle at
the foot of the bed, unstraps it, leaves you alone with it. It seems to
be trying to remind you of something or other. You do not listen. You
laugh as you open it. You know that if you examined these shirts you
would find them marked '273.' Before dressing for dinner, you take a
hot bath. There are patent taps, some for fresh water, others for sea
water. You hesitate. Yet you know that whichever you touch will effuse
but the water of Lethe, after all. You dress before your fire. The
coals have burnt now to a lovely glow. Once and again, you eye them
suspiciously. But no, there are no faces in them. All's well.

Sleek and fresh, you sit down to dinner in the 'Grande Salle a'
Manger.' Graven on your wine-glasses, emblazoned on your soup-plate,
are the armorial bearings of the company that shelters you. The College
of Arms might sneer at them, be down on them, but to you they are a
joy, in their grand lack of links with history. They are a sympathetic
symbol of your own newness, your own impersonality. You glance down the
endless menu. It has been composed for a community. None of your
favourite dishes (you once had favourite dishes) appears in it, thank
heaven! You will work your way through it, steadily, unquestioningly,
gladly, with a communal palate. And the wine? All wines are alike here,
surely. You scour the list vaguely, and order a pint of 273. Your eye
roves over the adjacent tables.

You behold a galaxy of folk evidently born, like yourself, anew. Some,
like yoursel