operations going on around him, but Raymond was not attentive. He failed
to concentrate and missed fundamental essentials from the desire to
examine more advanced and obviously interesting operations.

He apologised to John Best before the dinner-hour.

"This is only a preliminary canter," he said. "It's all Greek to me and
it will take time to get the thing clear. It looks quite different to me
from what it must to you. I'll get the general scheme into my head first
and then work out the details. A man's mind can't make order out of this
chaos in a minute."

He stood and tried to appreciate the trend of events. He enjoyed the
adventure, but at present made no effort to do more than enjoy it. He
would start to work later. He began to like the din and the dusty light
and the glitter and shine of polished metal and bright sliver eternally
winding into the cans. Round it hovered or sat the women like dull
moths. They wound the stream of hemp or flax away and snapped it when a
can was full. There was no pause or slackening, nothing but the whirl of
living hands and arms and bodies, dead wheels and teeth and pulleys and
pins operating on the inert tow. The mediators, animate and inanimate,
laboured together for its manufacture; while the masses of mingled wood
and steel, leather and brass and iron, moved in controlled obedience to
the giant forces liberated from steam and water that drove all. The
selfsame power, gleaned from sunshine and moisture and sublimated to
human flesh and blood through bread, plied in the fingers and muscles
and countless, complex mental directions of the men and women who
controlled. From sun-light and air, earth and water had also sprung the
fields of hemp and flax in far-off lands and yielded up their loveliness
to foreign scutchers. The dried death of countless beautiful herbs now