On the night after that, and on the following night, and for many nights
and days, so many that he began to be uncertain about the count of them,
Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching, eaten
out with unappeased curiosity and regardless that his life was becoming
one consuming passion and desire, continued his search for the unknown
co-numerator of his abode.


X

As time went on, it came to pass that few except the postman mounted
Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even
the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than
once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers,
asking when they might expect to receive the manuscript of his new book;
he delayed for some days to answer it, and finally forgot it. A second
letter came, which also he failed to answer. He received no third.

The weather grew bright and warm. The privet bushes among the
chopper-like notice-boards flowered, and in the streets where Oleron did
his shopping the baskets of flower-women lined the kerbs. Oleron
purchased flowers daily; his room clamoured for flowers, fresh and
continually renewed; and Oleron did not stint its demands. Nevertheless,
the necessity for going out to buy them began to irk him more and more,
and it was with a greater and ever greater sense of relief that he
returned home again. He began to be conscious that again his scale of
sensation had suffered a subtle change--a change that was not restoration
to its former capacity, but an extension and enlarging that once more
included terror. It admitted it in an entirely new form. _Lux orco,