in it, thank heaven! You will work your way through it, steadily,
unquestioningly, gladly, with a communal palate. And the wine? All
wines are alike here, surely. You scour the list vaguely, and order a
pint of 273. Your eye roves over the adjacent tables.

You behold a galaxy of folk evidently born, like yourself, anew. Some,
like yourself, are solitary. Others are with wives, with children--but
with new wives, new children. The associations of home have been
forgotten, even though home's actual appendages be here. The members
of the little domestic circles are using company manners. They are
actually making conversation, `breaking the ice.' They are new here to
one another. They are new to themselves. How much newer to you! You
cannot `place' them. That paterfamilias with the red moustache--is he
a soldier, a solicitor, a stockbroker, what? You play vaguely, vainly,
at the game of attributions, while the little orchestra in yonder
bower of artificial palm-trees plays new, or seemingly new, cake-
walks. Who are they, these minstrels in the shadow? They seem not to
be the Red Hungarians, nor the Blue, nor the Hungarians of any other
colour of the spectrum. You set them down as the Colourless
Hungarians, and resume your study of the tables. They fascinate you,
these your fellow-diners. You fascinate them, doubtless. They,
doubtless, are cudgelling their brains to `spot' your state in life--
your past, which now has escaped you. Next day, some of them are gone;
and you miss them, almost bitterly. But others succeed them, not less
detached and enigmatic than they. You must never speak to one of them.
You must never lapse into those casual acquaintances of the `lounge'
or the smoking-room. Nor is it hard to avoid them. No Englishman, how
gregarious and garrulous soever, will dare address another Englishman
in whose eye is no spark of invitation. There must be no such spark in
yours. Silence is part of the cure for you, and a very important part.