"No, no, Pascal, you cannot cure everything that way. It is not just," he
cried. And running forward with all his strength he lifted the stone
basin off the wounded creature--cat, man, beast of prey, modern
financier, be it what it might. He stopped to gather it up in his arms,
and, repulsive though it was, to comfort and protect it. But just then
came a thunderous rattle and crash knocking him senseless.

Mr. Iglesias sat bolt upright in his chair, uncertain of his identity and
surroundings, shaken and bewildered.

Upstairs, de Courcy Smyth--spent and stupefied by the writing of a would-
be smart critique on the first-night performance of a screaming farce,
for one of to-morrow's evening papers--had stumbled, upsetting the fire-
irons, as he slouched across his room to bed. Iglesias heard the creak of
the wire-wove mattress as the man flung himself down; and that familiar
sound restored his sense of actualities. Yet all his mood was changed and
softened. The return to childhood had made a strange impression upon him,
filling him with a great nostalgia for things apparently lost, but
exquisite; and which, having once been, might, though he knew not by what
conceivable alchemy of time or chance, once again be. Meanwhile, he must
have slept long, for the wind had grown chill. The voice of London, the
monstrous mother, had grown weak and intermittent. And the earthly light,
pulsing along the horizon, had grown faint, humbled and chastened by the
whiteness of approaching dawn.




CHAPTER IV