ht him relief. He could not shake
off their fascination for him. He was like a man hanging round the
scene of some conquered, unforgotten vice.

It was one dismal November evening that, turning aimlessly into a Soho
side-street, he came upon an old man who stood on a soap-box under a
lamp and preached. He held a Bible to the light and read from it, and
at intervals leant forward and beat the tattered book with his open
hand.

"You hear that, men and women. This is the liar, the tyrant, the
self-confessed devil whom you have worshipped from the beginning of
your creation. You see for yourselves the sort of beast he is. There
isn't a brute amongst us who would do the things he's done. He's made
you fight and kill and torture each other for his sake. And all down
the ages he has laughed at you--he is laughing now because, after
all--he knows the truth--he knows what I tell you here night after
night"--and Mr. Ricardo leant forward and pointed a long, dirty finger
at the darkness--"that he doesn't exist--that he is a dream--a myth--a
hope----"

Someone cheered--perhaps because the last words had a sound of eloquent
conclusion--and Mr. Ricardo nodded and took breath. He was like a
scarecrow image that had been stuck up by a freakish joker in a London
street. The respectability that still clung to him made him the more
ludicrous. His clothes were the ruined cast-offs of a middle-class
tradesman, and over them he wore his old masters gown. It did not
flutter out behind now, but lay dank and heavy along his sides like the
wings of a shot bird.

Robert Stonehouse stood back against the shuttered windows of a shop
and stared at him. The sea, rushing out in some monstrous tidal wave
had left its floor littered with old wreckage, with dead, forgotten
people who stirred and lifted themselves. A grotesque, private
resurrection. . . .

The crowd around Mr. Ricardo listened in silence, not mocking him.
There were wide-eyed, haunted-looking children, and men and women not
quite sober who drifted out from the public-houses to gape heavily at
this cheaper form of entertainment. Possibly they thought he was some
missionary trying to induce them to sign the pledge. Some of them must
have known that he was mad. But even they did not laugh at him. Into
their own dark and formless thoughts there may have come the dim
realization that they, too, were misshapen and outcast. The rain
falling in long, slanting lines throu