An hour passed, and the downstairs rooms at the hotel grew dimand were almost deserted, while the little box-like squares abovethem were brilliantly irradiated. Some forty or fifty peoplewere going to bed. The thump of jugs set down on the floor abovecould be heard and the clink of china, for there was not as thicka partition between the rooms as one might wish, so Miss Allan,the elderly lady who had been playing bridge, determined, givingthe wall a smart rap with her knuckles. It was only matchboard,she decided, run up to make many little rooms of one large one.

　　Her grey petticoats slipped to the ground, and, stooping, she foldedher clothes with neat, if not loving fingers, screwed her hair intoa plait, wound her father's great gold watch, and opened the completeworks of Wordsworth. She was reading the "Prelude," partly because shealways read the "Prelude" abroad, and partly because she was engagedin writing a short _Primer_ _of_ _English_ _Literature_--_Beowulf__to_ _Swinburne_--which would have a paragraph on Wordsworth.

　　She was deep in the fifth book, stopping indeed to pencil a note,when a pair of boots dropped, one after another, on the floorabove her. She looked up and speculated. Whose boots were they,she wondered. She then became aware of a swishing sound next door--a woman, clearly, putting away her dress. It was succeeded by a gentletapping sound, such as that which accompanies hair-dressing. Itwas very difficult to keep her attention fixed upon the "Prelude."Was it Susan Warrington tapping? She forced herself, however, to readto the end of the book, when she placed a mark between the pages,sighed contentedly, and then turned out the light.

　　Very different was the room through the wall, though as like inshape as one egg-box is like another. As Miss Allan read her book,Susan Warrington was brushing her hair. Ages have consecratedthis hour, and the most majestic of all domestic actions, to talkof love between women; but Miss Warrington being alone could not talk;she could only look with extreme solicitude at her own face inthe glass. She turned her head from side to side, tossing heavylocks now this way now that; and then withdrew a pace or two,and considered herself seriously.

　　"I'm nice-looking," she determined. "Not pretty--possibly," she drewherself up a little. "Yes--most people would say I was handsome."She was really wondering what Arthur Venning would say she was.

　　Her feeling about him was decidedly queer. She would not admit toherself that she was in love with him or that she wanted to marry him,yet she spent every minute when she was alone in wondering what hethought of her, and in comparing what they had done to-day withwhat they had done the day before.

　　"He didn't ask me to play, but he certainly followed me into the hall,"she meditated, summing up the evening. She was thirty years of age,and owing to the number of her sisters and the seclusion of lifein a country parsonage had as yet had no proposal of marriage.

　　The hour of confidences was often a sad one, and she had been knownto jump into bed, treating her hair unkindly, feeling herself overlookedby life in comparison with others. She was a big, well-made woman,the red lying upon her cheeks in patches that were too well defined,but her serious anxiety gave her a kind of beauty.

　　She was just about to pull back the bed-clothes when she exclaimed,"Oh, but I'm forgetting," and went to her writing-table. Abrown volume lay there stamped with the figure of the year.

　　She proceeded to write in the square ugly hand of a mature child,as she wrote daily year after year, keeping the diaries, though sheseldom looked at them.

　　"A.M.--Talked to Mrs. H. Elliot about country neighbours. She knowsthe Manns; also the Selby-Carroways. How small the world is!

　　Like her. Read a chapter of _Miss_ _Appleby's_ _Adventure_ to AuntE. P.M.--Played lawn-tennis with Mr. Perrott and Evelyn M. Don't_like_ Mr. P. Have a feeling that he is not 'quite,' thoughclever certainly. Beat them. Day splendid, view wonderful.

　　One gets used to no trees, though much too bare at first.

　　Cards after dinner. Aunt E. cheerful, though twingy, she says.

　　Mem.: _ask_ _about_ _damp_ _sheets_."She knelt in prayer, and then lay down in bed, tucking the blanketscomfortably about her, and in a few minutes her breathing showed that shewas asleep. With its profoundly peaceful sighs and hesitations it resembledthat of a cow standing up to its knees all night through in the long grass.

　　A glance into the next room revealed little more than a nose,prominent above the sheets. Growing accustomed to the darkness,for the windows were open and showed grey squares with splintersof starlight, one could distinguish a lean form, terribly likethe body of a dead person, the body indeed of William Pepper,asleep too. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight--here were threePortuguese men of business, asleep presumably, since a snore camewith the regularity of a great ticking clock. Thirty-nine was acorner room, at the end of the passage, but late though it was--"One"struck gently downstairs--a line of light under the door showedthat some one was still awake.

　　"How late you are, Hugh!" a woman, lying in bed, said in a peevishbut solicitous voice. Her husband was brushing his teeth,and for some moments did not answer.

　　"You should have gone to sleep," he replied. "I was talkingto Thornbury.""But you know that I never can sleep when I'm waiting for you,"she said.

　　To that he made no answer, but only remarked, "Well then, we'll turnout the light." They were silent.

　　The faint but penetrating pulse of an electric bell could now be heardin the corridor. Old Mrs. Paley, having woken hungry but withouther spectacles, was summoning her maid to find the biscuit-box. Themaid having answered the bell, drearily respectful even at this hourthough muffled in a mackintosh, the passage was left in silence.

　　Downstairs all was empty and dark; but on the upper floor a light stillburnt in the room where the boots had dropped so heavily above MissAllan's head. Here was the gentleman who, a few hours previously,in the shade of the curtain, had seemed to consist entirely of legs.

　　Deep in an arm-chair he was reading the third volume of Gibbon's_History_ _of_ _the_ _Decline_ _and_ _Fall_ _of_ _Rome_ by candle-light.

　　As he read he knocked the ash automatically, now and again,from his cigarette and turned the page, while a whole processionof splendid sentences entered his capacious brow and went marchingthrough his brain in order. It seemed likely that this processmight continue for an hour or more, until the entire regiment hadshifted its quarters, had not the door opened, and the young man,who was inclined to be stout, come in with large naked feet.

　　"Oh, Hirst, what I forgot to say was--""Two minutes," said Hirst, raising his finger.

　　He safely stowed away the last words of the paragraph.

　　"What was it you forgot to say?" he asked.

　　"D'you think you _do_ make enough allowance for feelings?"asked Mr. Hewet. He had again forgotten what he had meant to say.

　　After intense contemplation of the immaculate Gibbon Mr. Hirstsmiled at the question of his friend. He laid aside his bookand considered.

　　"I should call yours a singularly untidy mind," he observed.

　　"Feelings? Aren't they just what we do allow for? We put loveup there, and all the rest somewhere down below." With his lefthand he indicated the top of a pyramid, and with his right the base.

　　"But you didn't get out of bed to tell me that," he added severely.

　　"I got out of bed," said Hewet vaguely, "merely to talk I suppose.""Meanwhile I shall undress," said Hirst. When naked of all buthis shirt, and bent over the basin, Mr. Hirst no longer impressedone with the majesty of his intellect, but with the pathos of hisyoung yet ugly body, for he stooped, and he was so thin that therewere dark lines between the different bones of his neck and shoulders.

　　"Women interest me," said Hewet, who, sitting on the bed with hischin resting on his knees, paid no attention to the undressingof Mr. Hirst.

　　"They're so stupid," said Hirst. "You're sitting on my pyjamas.""I suppose they _are_ stupid?" Hewet wondered.

　　"There can't be two opinions about that, I imagine," said Hirst,hopping briskly across the room, "unless you're in love--that fatwoman Warrington?" he enquired.

　　"Not one fat woman--all fat women," Hewet sighed.

　　"The women I saw to-night were not fat," said Hirst, who was takingadvantage of Hewet's company to cut his toe-nails.

　　"Describe them," said Hewet.

　　"You know I can't describe things!" said Hirst. "They were muchlike other women, I should think. They always are.""No; that's where we differ," said Hewet. "I say everything's different.

　　No two people are in the least the same. Take you and me now.""So I used to think once," said Hirst. "But now they're all types.

　　Don't take us,--take this hotel. You could draw circles roundthe whole lot of them, and they'd never stray outside."("You can kill a hen by doing that"), Hewet murmured.

　　"Mr. Hughling Elliot, Mrs. Hughling Elliot, Miss Allan, Mr. andMrs. Thornbury--one circle," Hirst continued. "Miss Warrington,Mr. Arthur Venning, Mr. Perrott, Evelyn M. another circle;then there are a whole lot of natives; finally ourselves.""Are we all alone in our circle?" asked Hewet.

　　"Quite alone," said Hirst. "You try to get out, but you can't.

　　You only make a mess of things by trying.""I'm not a hen in a circle," said Hewet. "I'm a dove on a tree-top.""I wonder if this is what they call an ingrowing toe-nail?"said Hirst, examining the big toe on his left foot.

　　"I flit from branch to branch," continued Hewet. "The worldis profoundly pleasant." He lay back on the bed, upon his arms.

　　"I wonder if it's really nice to be as vague as you are?" asked Hirst,looking at him. "It's the lack of continuity--that's what'sso odd bout you," he went on. "At the age of twenty-seven,which is nearly thirty, you seem to have drawn no conclusions.

　　A party of old women excites you still as though you were three."Hewet contemplated the angular young man who was neatly brushingthe rims of his toe-nails into the fire-place in silence for a moment.

　　"I respect you, Hirst," he remarked.

　　"I envy you--some things," said Hirst. "One: your capacityfor not thinking; two: people like you better than they like me.

　　Women like you, I suppose.""I wonder whether that isn't really what matters most?" said Hewet.

　　Lying now flat on the bed he waved his hand in vague circlesabove him.

　　"Of course it is," said Hirst. "But that's not the difficulty.

　　The difficulty is, isn't it, to find an appropriate object?""There are no female hens in your circle?" asked Hewet.

　　"Not the ghost of one," said Hirst.

　　Although they had known each other for three years Hirst had neveryet heard the true story of Hewet's loves. In general conversationit was taken for granted that they were many, but in privatethe subject was allowed to lapse. The fact that he had money enoughto do no work, and that he had left Cambridge after two termsowing to a difference with the authorities, and had then travelledand drifted, made his life strange at many points where his friends'

　　lives were much of a piece.

　　"I don't see your circles--I don't see them," Hewet continued.

　　"I see a thing like a teetotum spinning in and out--knocking into things--dashing from side to side--collecting numbers--more and more and more,till the whole place is thick with them. Round and round they go--out there, over the rim--out of sight."His fingers showed that the waltzing teetotums had spun over the edgeof the counterpane and fallen off the bed into infinity.

　　"Could you contemplate three weeks alone in this hotel?" asked Hirst,after a moment's pause.

　　Hewet proceeded to think.

　　"The truth of it is that one never is alone, and one never isin company," he concluded.

　　"Meaning?" said Hirst.

　　"Meaning? Oh, something about bubbles--auras--what d'you call 'em?

　　You can't see my bubble; I can't see yours; all we see of eachother is a speck, like the wick in the middle of that flame.

　　The flame goes about with us everywhere; it's not ourselves exactly,but what we feel; the world is short, or people mainly; all kindsof people.""A nice streaky bubble yours must be!" said Hirst.

　　"And supposing my bubble could run into some one else's bubble--""And they both burst?" put in Hirst.

　　"Then--then--then--" pondered Hewet, as if to himself, "it would bean e-nor-mous world," he said, stretching his arms to their full width,as though even so they could hardly clasp the billowy universe,for when he was with Hirst he always felt unusually sanguineand vague.

　　"I don't think you altogether as foolish as I used to, Hewet,"said Hirst. "You don't know what you mean but you try to say it.""But aren't you enjoying yourself here?" asked Hewet.

　　"On the whole--yes," said Hirst. "I like observing people.

　　I like looking at things. This country is amazingly beautiful.

　　Did you notice how the top of the mountain turned yellow to-night?

　　Really we must take our lunch and spend the day out. You're gettingdisgustingly fat." He pointed at the calf of Hewet's bare leg.

　　"We'll get up an expedition," said Hewet energetically. "We'll askthe entire hotel. We'll hire donkeys and--""Oh, Lord!" said Hirst, "do shut it! I can see Miss Warringtonand Miss Allan and Mrs. Elliot and the rest squatting on the stonesand quacking, 'How jolly!'""We'll ask Venning and Perrott and Miss Murgatroyd--every one we canlay hands on," went on Hewet. "What's the name of the little oldgrasshopper with the eyeglasses? Pepper?--Pepper shall lead us.""Thank God, you'll never get the donkeys," said Hirst.

　　"I must make a note of that," said Hewet, slowly dropping his feetto the floor. "Hirst escorts Miss Warrington; Pepper advances alone ona white ass; provisions equally distributed--or shall we hire a mule?

　　The matrons--there's Mrs. Paley, by Jove!--share a carriage.""That's where you'll go wrong," said Hirst. "Putting virginsamong matrons.""How long should you think that an expedition like thatwould take, Hirst?" asked Hewet.

　　"From twelve to sixteen hours I would say," said Hirst. "The timeusually occupied by a first confinement.""It will need considerable organisation," said Hewet. He wasnow padding softly round the room, and stopped to stir the bookson the table. They lay heaped one upon another.

　　"We shall want some poets too," he remarked. "Not Gibbon; no;d'you happen to have _Modern_ _Love_ or _John_ _Donne_? You see,I contemplate pauses when people get tired of looking at the view,and then it would be nice to read something rather difficult aloud.""Mrs. Paley _will_ enjoy herself," said Hirst.

　　"Mrs. Paley will enjoy it certainly," said Hewet. "It's one of thesaddest things I know--the way elderly ladies cease to read poetry.

　　And yet how appropriate this is:

　　I speak as one who plumbsLife's dim profound,One who at length can soundClear views and certain.

　　But--after love what comes?

　　A scene that lours,A few sad vacant hours,And then, the Curtain.

　　I daresay Mrs. Paley is the only one of us who can really understand that.""We'll ask her," said Hirst. "Please, Hewet, if you must go to bed,draw my curtain. Few things distress me more than the moonlight."Hewet retreated, pressing the poems of Thomas Hardy beneath his arm,and in their beds next door to each other both the young men weresoon asleep.

　　Between the extinction of Hewet's candle and the rising of a duskySpanish boy who was the first to survey the desolation of the hotelin the early morning, a few hours of silence intervened. One couldalmost hear a hundred people breathing deeply, and however wakefuland restless it would have been hard to escape sleep in the middleof so much sleep. Looking out of the windows, there was onlydarkness to be seen. All over the shadowed half of the worldpeople lay prone, and a few flickering lights in empty streetsmarked the places where their cities were built. Red and yellowomnibuses were crowding each other in Piccadilly; sumptuous womenwere rocking at a standstill; but here in the darkness an owl flittedfrom tree to tree, and when the breeze lifted the branches the moonflashed as if it were a torch. Until all people should awakeagain the houseless animals were abroad, the tigers and the stags,and the elephants coming down in the darkness to drink at pools.

　　The wind at night blowing over the hills and woods was purerand fresher than the wind by day, and the earth, robbed of detail,more mysterious than the earth coloured and divided by roadsand fields. For six hours this profound beauty existed, and thenas the east grew whiter and whiter the ground swam to the surface,the roads were revealed, the smoke rose and the people stirred,and the sun shone upon the windows of the hotel at Santa Marina untilthey were uncurtained, and the gong blaring all through the housegave notice of breakfast.

　　Directly breakfast was over, the ladies as usual circled vaguely,picking up papers and putting them down again, about the hall.

　　"And what are you going to do to-day?" asked Mrs. Elliot driftingup against Miss Warrington.

　　Mrs. Elliot, the wife of Hughling the Oxford Don, was a short woman,whose expression was habitually plaintive. Her eyes moved from thingto thing as though they never found anything sufficiently pleasantto rest upon for any length of time.

　　"I'm going to try to get Aunt Emma out into the town," said Susan.

　　"She's not seen a thing yet.""I call it so spirited of her at her age," said Mrs. Elliot,"coming all this way from her own fireside.""Yes, we always tell her she'll die on board ship," Susan replied.

　　"She was born on one," she added.

　　"In the old days," said Mrs. Elliot, "a great many people were.

　　I always pity the poor women so! We've got a lot to complain of!"She shook her head. Her eyes wandered about the table, and sheremarked irrelevantly, "The poor little Queen of Holland!

　　Newspaper reporters practically, one may say, at her bedroom door!""Were you talking of the Queen of Holland?" said the pleasant voiceof Miss Allan, who was searching for the thick pages of _The__Times_ among a litter of thin foreign sheets.

　　"I always envy any one who lives in such an excessively flat country,"she remarked.

　　"How very strange!" said Mrs. Elliot. "I find a flat countryso depressing.""I'm afraid you can't be very happy here then, Miss Allan,"said Susan.

　　"On the contrary," said Miss Allan, "I am exceedingly fond of mountains."Perceiving _The_ _Times_ at some distance, she moved off to secure it.

　　"Well, I must find my husband," said Mrs. Elliot, fidgeting away.

　　"And I must go to my aunt," said Miss Warrington, and taking upthe duties of the day they moved away.

　　Whether the flimsiness of foreign sheets and the coarseness oftheir type is any proof of frivolity and ignorance, there is nodoubt that English people scarce consider news read there as news,any more than a programme bought from a man in the street inspiresconfidence in what it says. A very respectable elderly pair,having inspected the long tables of newspapers, did not think itworth their while to read more than the headlines.

　　"The debate on the fifteenth should have reached us by now,"Mrs. Thornbury murmured. Mr. Thornbury, who was beautifully cleanand had red rubbed into his handsome worn face like traces of painton a weather-beaten wooden figure, ............