the first words of the ninth chapter, in the Friedrichstrasse railway
station (that's in Berlin, you know), on my way to Poland, or more
precisely to Ukraine. On an early, sleepy morning changing trains in
a hurry I left my Gladstone bag in a refreshment-room. A worthy and
intelligent Koffertrager rescued it. Yet in my anxiety I was not
thinking of the MS. but of all the other things that were packed in the
bag.

In Warsaw, where I spent two days, those wandering pages were never
exposed to the light, except once, to candle-light, while the bag lay
open on a chair. I was dressing hurriedly to dine at a sporting club. A
friend of my childhood (he had been in the Diplomatic Service, but had
turned to growing wheat on paternal acres, and we had not seen each
other for over twenty years) was sitting on the hotel sofa waiting to
carry me off there.

"You might tell me something of your life while you are dressing," he
suggested kindly.

I do not think I told him much of my life-story either then or later.
The talk of the select little party with which he made me dine was
extremely animated and embraced most subjects under heaven, from
big-game shooting in Africa to the last poem published in a very
modernist review, edited by the very young and patronised by the highest
society. But it never touched upon "Almayer's Folly," and next morning,
in uninterrupted obscurity, this inseparable companion went on rolling
with me in the south-east direction towards the Government of Kiev.

At that time there was an eight-hours' drive, if not more, from the
railway station to the country house which was my destination.