suffered no self-reproach. The good, simple couple were shutting up house
and going to bed, he supposed. They sought repose betimes; and, unless
supper had been more aggressively cold and heavy than usual, slept, till
broad day, a dreamless sleep. Decidedly it was well he had not taken his
hat and stepped across to visit them, for, beyond all question, they
would not have understood! The voice of London, for instance, meant
nothing to them. They had no notion London had a voice. Still less had
they any notion she was a prodigious living creature. London was the
place where they resided--that was all, and, since the streets are
admittedly noisy and dusty, they had taken a house in this genteel and
convenient suburb. Of the tremendous life and force of things, miscalled
man-made and inanimate, they had no faintest conception. Small wonder
they went to bed betimes and slept a dreamless sleep! Thinking of which--
notwithstanding their kindness and affection--they became, just now, to
Iglesias as truly astonishing phenomena in their line as Sir Abel Barking
in his. He saw in them merely specimens, though good ones, of the great
majority of the British public, a public so overlaid and permeated by
convention, so parochial in outlook, so hidebound by social tradition and
insular prejudice, that it is really less in touch with everlasting fact
than the animals it pets, demoralises, and eats. These at least have
instinct, and so are at one with universal nature. In perception, in
spontaneity of action, good Mrs. Lovegrove was as an infant compared to
her parrot or her pug. So was little Mr. Farge with his sophisticated
warblings--so, for that matter, were all the other persons among whom
his, Iglesias', lot was cast. His sense of isolation deepened. If
amusement was his object, most certainly the society of Trimmer's Green
would not supply it. He must look further afield for all that.

In the far northwest the last of the sunset had faded; only the cloud
remained. Yet the horizon, above the broken line of the house-roofs and