, halt, and retreat with knees trembling, is to witness a
shattering spectacle of complete physical disorganisation. Harding said
that he enters a revolving door with no serious hope of coming out
alive. By anticipation he feels his face driven through the glass
partition in front of him, and the crash of the panel behind him upon
his skull. Some day, Harding believed, he would be caught fast in one
of those compartments and stick. Axes and crowbars would be
requisitioned to retrieve his lifeless form.

Bowman agreed with Harding. His own life, Bowman was inclined to
believe, is typical of most civilised men, in that it is passed in
constant terror of his inferiors. The people whom he hires to serve him
strike fear into Bowman's soul. He is habitually afraid of janitors,
train-guards, elevator-boys, barbers, bootblacks, telephone-girls, and
saleswomen. But his particular dread is of waiters. There have been
times when Bowman thought that to punish poor service and set an example
to others, he would omit the customary tip. But such a resolution,
embraced with the soup, has never lasted beyond the entree. And, as a
matter of fact, Bowman said, such a resolution always spoils his dinner.
As long as he entertains it, he dares not look his man in the eye. He
stirs his coffee with shaking fingers. He is cravenly, horribly afraid.

Bowman is afraid even of new waiters and of waiters he never expects to
see again. Surely, it must be safe not to tip a waiter one never
expected to see again. "But no," said Bowman, "I should feel his
contemptuous gaze in the marrow of my backbone as I walked out. I could
not keep from shaking, and I should rush from that place in agony, with
the man's derisive laughter ringing in my ears."

The only one of the company who was not afraid of something concrete,
something tangible, was Williams. Now Williams is notoriously,
hopelessly shy; and when he took up the subject where Bowman had left
it, he poured out his soul with all the fervour and abandon of which
only the shy are capable. Williams was afraid of his own past. It was
not a hideously criminal one, for his life had been that of a bookworm
and recluse. But out of that past Williams would conjure up the
slightest incident--a trifling breach of manners, a mere word out of
place, a moment in which he had lost control of his emotions, and the
memory of it would put him into a cold sweat of horror and shame.

Years ago, at a small dinner party