knowing the end to all
their enthusiasms. It was as though he had travelled ahead, and had
found out how meaningless everything was, even his clever friend's
strength and cleverness.

So he did not get better. And the forces that Robert Stonehouse had
counted on had failed. He had been a successful physician outside his
specialty and his sheer indifference to his patients as human beings had
been one of his chief weapons. He braced them, imposing his sense of
values so that their own sufferings became insignificant, and they ceased
to worry so much about themselves. But with Cosgrave he was not
indifferent. Some indefinable element of emotion had been thrown into
the scales, upsetting the delicate balance of his judgment.

And his old influence had gone too. It had failed him from that moment
in Connie Edwards' room when suddenly Cosgrave had realized the general
futility of things.

"I'll see him through all the same," Stonehouse thought, with a kind of
violence, "I'll pull him through."

After the first few moments he had ignored the scene before him. It was
boring--imbecile. Even to him, with his contempt for the average of
human intelligence, it seemed incredible that the gyrating of a few
half-naked women and the silly obscenities of a comedian dressed in a
humourless caricature of a gentleman should hold the attention of sane
men for a minute. Now abruptly the orchestra caught hold of him, shook
him and dragged him back. It was playing something which he had heard
before--on a street barrel-organ, and which he disliked now with an
intensity for which he could give no reason. It was perhaps because he
wanted to remain aloof and indifferent, and because it would not let him
be. It destroyed his isolation. His pulse caught up its beat like the
rest. His personality lost outline--merging itself into the cumbrous
uncouth being of the audience.

Though it was a rhythm rather than a tune it was not rag-time. Rag-time
Stonehouse appreciated. He recognized it as a symptom of the _mal du
siecle_, a deliberate break with the natural rhythm of life, a desperate
ennui, the hysterical pressure upon an aching cancer. Ragtime twitched
at the nerves. This thing jostled you, bustled you. It was a shout--a
caper--the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay of its day, riotous and vulgar. It was
the sort of thing coster-women danced to on the pavements of Epsom on
Derby night.

The stage, set with a stereotyped drawing-room