And with this he ceased, in instinct, to be merely the highly respected
and respectable head clerk of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking--now
superannuated and laid on the shelf. A gayer, fiercer, simpler life,
quick with violences of vivacious sound and vivid colour, the excitement
of it heightened by clear shining southern sunshine and blue-black
shadow--a life undreamed of by conventional, slow-moving, rather vulgar
middle-class London--to which, on the face of it, he appeared as
emphatically to belong--awoke and cried in Dominic Iglesias.

It was a surprising little experience, causing him to straighten up his
lean yet shapely figure; while the burden of his years, and the long
monotony of them, seemed strangely lifted off him. Then, with the air of
courtly reserve--at once the joke and envy of the younger clerks, which
had earned him the nickname of "the old Hidalgo"--he leaned forward and
addressed the omnibus driver. The latter upraised a broad, moist and
sleepy countenance.

"Polo at Ranelagh," he answered, in a voice thickened by dust and the
laying of that dust by strong waters. "Club team plays 'Undred and First
Lancers."

The words had been to the inquirer pretty much as phrases from the
liturgy of an unknown cult. But it was Iglesias' praiseworthy disposition
not to be angry with that which he did not happen to understand, so much
as angry with himself for not understanding it.

"Only an additional proof, were it needed, of the prodigious extent of my
ignorance!" he reflected in stoically humorous self-contempt. His eyes
dwelt, somewhat wistfully, on the glittering stream of traffic, once
again those two unbidden guests, Loneliness and Freedom--for whose