stoker, "but I think, perhaps--well, perhaps you ought to know--
there's a dead man in this train."

. . . . .

Had I been a true artist, a person of exquisite susceptibilities
and nothing else, I should have been bound, no doubt, to be
finally overwhelmed with this sensational touch, and to have
insisted on getting out and walking. As it was, I regret to
say, I expressed myself politely, but firmly, to the effect that
I didn't care particularly if the train took me to Paddington.
But when the train had started with its unknown burden I did do
one thing, and do it quite instinctively, without stopping to
think, or to think more than a flash. I threw away my cigar.
Something that is as old as man and has to do with all mourning
and ceremonial told me to do it. There was something
unnecessarily horrible, it seemed to me, in the idea of there
being only two men in that train, and one of them dead and the
other smoking a cigar. And as the red and gold of the butt end
of it faded like a funeral torch trampled out at some symbolic
moment of a procession, I realised how immortal ritual is. I
realised (what is the origin and essence of all ritual) that in
the presence of those sacred riddles about which we can say
nothing it is more decent merely to do something. And I realised
that ritual will always mean throwing away something; DESTROYING
our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

When the train panted at last into Paddington Station I sprang
out of it with a suddenly released curiosity. There was a barrier
and officials guarding the rear part of the train; no one was