Farge's sophisticated and unpastoral pipings, came the voice of the great
city herself in answer--low, multitudinous, raucous, without emphasis but
without briefest relief of interval or of pause. And this laid hold
strongly of Iglesias' imagination, reminding him of all the intimate
wretchedness of that first stranding of the ship of his fate. Reminding
him of his long and fruitless trampings in search of employment--good
looks, energy, youth itself, seeming but an added handicap--when London
revealed herself to him in her solidarity, revealed herself as a
prodigious living creature, awful in her mysterious vigour, ever big with
impending birth, merciless with impending death. As she showed herself to
him then, with life all untried before him, so she showed herself still
when, in the blackness of his present humour, all life worth the name
appeared over and passed. He had changed, so he believed, to the point of
nullity and final ineptitude. She remained strong, active, relentless as
ever. As long ago, so now, she struck him as monstrous. Yet now, though
all the conditions were changed, he had, as long ago, an instinct that
from her there was no escape.

"I have served you honestly enough all these years," he said--since she
had voice to speak, she had also ears to hear, mayhap--"and you have
taken much and given little. To-day you have turned me off, told me to
quit. But where, I ask you, can I go? I am too stiffened by work,
unskilled in travel, too unadaptable to begin again elsewhere. Moreover,
you hold the record of my experience, all my glad and sorrowful memories.
I might try to leave you, but it's no use. I am planted and rooted in
you, monstrous mother that you are. If I know myself, I should go only to
come back."

For the moment the calm of long self-control was broken up within him.
Dominic Iglesias dwelt, consciously and sensibly, in the horror of the