quantity, amusement? How was the spirit of it cultivated, the enjoyment
of it consciously attained? How far did it reside in inward attitude, how
far in outward circumstance? In a word, how did they all do it? It was
very incumbent upon him to learn, and he admitted a ridiculous ignorance.




CHAPTER III


Thus had the chapter of labour ended, and that of leisure opened. And it
was with the sadness of things terminated very strongly upon him that, as
Frederick, the German-Swiss valet, finished clearing the dinner-table and
departed, Mr. Iglesias looked forth over the neatly protected verdure of
Trimmer's Green in the evening quiet. The smugly pacific aspect of the
place irritated him. He was aware of a great emptiness. And very
certainly the scene before him offered no solution of the problem of the
filling of that emptiness. And somehow or other it had to be filled--
Iglesias knew that, knew it through every fibre of him--or life would be
simply insupportable. Meanwhile from the public drawing-room below came
sounds of revelry, innocent enough yet hardly calculated to soothe over-
strained nerves. Little Mr. Farge--whose thin and reedy tenor carried as
does a penny whistle--gave forth the refrain of a song just then popular
in metropolitan music-halls.

"They're keeping latish hours at the Convalescent Home," piped Mr. Farge;
while his friend and devout admirer, Albert Edward Worthington, tore at
the banjo strings and the ladies tittered.