that puzzling girl. I remembered that she had said she stood for the
future, that she was a symbol of my own decay--the whole silly farrago,
in fact. I reasoned with myself--that I was tired, out of trim, and so
on, that I was in a fit state to be at the mercy of any nightmare. I
plunged into Southampton Row. There was safety in the contact with the
crowd, in jostling, in being jostled.




CHAPTER SIX


It was Saturday and, as was his custom during the session, the Foreign
Secretary had gone for privacy and rest till Monday to a small country
house he had within easy reach of town. I went down with a letter from
Fox in my pocket, and early in the afternoon found myself talking
without any kind of inward disturbance to the Minister's aunt, a lean,
elderly lady, with a keen eye, and credited with a profound knowledge of
European politics. She had a rather abrupt manner and a business-like,
brown scheme of coloration. She looked people very straight in the face,
bringing to bear all the penetration which, as rumour said, enabled her
to take a hidden, but very real part in the shaping of our foreign
policy. She seemed to catalogue me, label me, and lay me on the shelf,
before I had given my first answer to her first question.

"You ought to know this part of the country well," she said. I think she
was considering me as a possible canvasser--an infinitesimal thing, but
of a kind possibly worth remembrance at the next General Election.