The scent of overheated flowers, the sudden warm breeze eddying from a
capricious fan, the mourning thrill of the violins emphasised the
emphasis of the words.

And they sounded sadder and more meaningless now to him, here in his
own room, until the monotony of their recurrent mockery began to unnerve
him.

He turned on the electricity, shrank from it, extinguished it. And for a
long time he sat there in the darkness of early morning, his unfilled
pipe clutched in his nerveless hand.




CHAPTER II

A DREAM ENDS


To pick up once more and tighten and knot together the loosened threads
which represented the unfinished record that his race had woven into the
social fabric of the metropolis was merely an automatic matter for
Selwyn.

His own people had always been among the makers of that fabric. Into
part of its vast and intricate pattern they had woven an inconspicuously
honourable record--chronicles of births and deaths and marriages, a
plain memorandum of plain living, and upright dealing with their fellow