surrounded by the litter of a desperate fray for days and nights on
end. It seemed so, because of the intense weariness of which that
interruption had made me aware--the awful disenchantment of a mind
realising suddenly the futility of an enormous task, joined to a bodily
fatigue such as no ordinary amount of fairly heavy physical labour could
ever account for. I have carried bags of wheat on my back, bent almost
double under a ship's deck-beams, from six in the morning till six in
the evening (with an hour and a half off for meals), so I ought to know.

And I love letters. I am jealous of their honour and concerned for the
dignity and comeliness of their service. I was, most likely, the only
writer that neat lady had ever caught in the exercise of his craft, and
it distressed me not to be able to remember when it was that I dressed
myself last, and how. No doubt that would be all right in essentials.
The fortune of the house included a pair of grey-blue watchful eyes that
would see to that. But I felt somehow as grimy as a Costaguana lepero
after a day's fighting in the streets, rumpled all over and dishevelled
down to my very heels. And I am afraid I blinked stupidly. All this was
bad for the honour of letters and the dignity of their service. Seen
indistinctly through the dust of my collapsed universe, the good lady
glanced about the room with a slightly amused serenity. And she was
smiling. What on earth was she smiling at? She remarked casually:

"I am afraid I interrupted you."

"Not at all."

She accepted the denial in perfect good faith. And it was strictly true.
Interrupted--indeed! She had robbed me of at least twenty lives, each
infinitely more poignant and real than her own, because informed with