important. A notice on the wall, politely requesting you to leave your
key at the bureau (as though you were strong enough or capacious
enough to carry it about with you) comes as a pleasant reminder of
your freedom. You remember joyously that you are even free from
yourself. You have begun a new life, have forgotten the old. This
mantelpiece, so strangely and brightly bare of photographs or
`knickknacks,' is meaning in its meaninglessness. And these blank,
fresh walls, that you have never seen, and that never were seen by any
one whom you know...their pattern is of poppies and mandragora,
surely. Poppies and mandragora are woven, too, on the brand-new
Axminster beneath your elastic step. `Come in!' A porter bears in your
trunk, deposits it on a trestle at the foot of the bed, unstraps it,
leaves you alone with it. It seems to be trying to remind you of some-
thing or other. You do not listen. You laugh as you open it. You know
that if you examined these shirts you would find them marked `273.'
Before dressing for dinner, you take a hot bath. There are patent
taps, some for fresh water, others for sea water. You hesitate. Yet
you know that whichever you touch will effuse but the water of Lethe,
after all. You dress before your fire. The coals have burnt now to a
lovely glow. Once and again, you eye them suspiciously. But no, there
are no faces in them. All's well.

Sleek and fresh, you sit down to dinner in the `Grande Salle a`
Manger.' Graven on your wine-glasses, emblazoned on your soup-plate,
are the armorial bearings of the company that shelters you. The
College of Arms might sneer at them, be down on them, but to you they
are a joy, in their grand lack of links with history. They are a
sympathetic symbol of your own newness, your own impersonality. You
glance down the endless menu. It has been composed for a community.
None of your favourite dishes (you once had favourite dishes) appears