Outer Darkness--which horror is known only to that small and somewhat
suspect minority of human beings who are also capable, by the operation
of the divine mercy, of dwelling in the glory of the Uncreated Light. The
swing of the pendulum is equal to right as to left. He was staggered by
the misery of his own isolation--a stranger, as he suddenly realised, by
temperament and ideals, as well as by race! Then resolutely he turned his
back on this, with an instinct of self-preservation directing his thought
to things practical and average.

For example, that question of the pension--concerning which he now found,
to his slight surprise, he was no longer the least in doubt. This money
was his by right. The hard strain in his nature was dominant--to the full
he would claim his rights. And since in moments of despair the human mind
invariably requires a human victim, be it merely a simulacrum, a waxen
image of a man to melt in the fires of its humiliation and revolt,
Iglesias remembered, with much contemptuous satisfaction, the ironical
portrait of Sir Abel Barking adorning the wall of the latter's private
room at the bank. He hailed the diabolic talent of the artist who had
laid bare with such subtle skill the flatulence of his sitter. It was a
pretty revenge, very assuaging just now to Iglesias. For the real man, as
he reflected, was not the man who sat heavily self-complacent in a
library chair, exuding platitudes and pride of patronage; but the man who
hung upon the wall forever ridiculous while paint and canvas should last.
Thus would he go down to posterity! And to Dominic Iglesias, just now, it
seemed very excellent that posterity should know him for the wind-bag
hypocrite he essentially was. Securely entrenched behind his own large
prosperity, uxoriousness, paternity, had he not counted his, Iglesias',
blessings to him; counselling amusement, rest, congratulating him on just
all that which made for his present distress--namely, his obscure
position, his enforced idleness, his absence of human ties, the general