THREE:Quietly and firmly he disengaged her arm from his, and putting her into her chair again, he presently returned, bringing a tray for her. Then, gently insisting, he made her eat and drink.He sat there, alone in the darkening room, doing nothing as far as definite effort went, and yet conscious of an intense internal activity in just looking at the myriads of images that this magic lantern of the mind presented to him. Now for a little it seemed to him that he contemplated a series of pictures that concerned the life which had once been his, and was now finished and rolled up, done with for ever. Now again for a little it seemed that all that was thus presented to him was the life that was going to be his, until for him all life was over. Alice would always be sewing slippers, his wife would always be ordering a bit of salmon, he would always be sitting in an empty office. For a few weeks there had passed across those eternal reiterations somebody whose very face he could not now recall, and when he tried to imagine her, he could see nothing but a blank, a black strip where words had been erased. To-morrow by this time he would know which of those two aspects was the true one: either the salmon and the slippers and this lonely meditation would be his no longer, or they would be all that he could call his. He felt, too, that it was already settled which it was to be: fate had already written in the inexorable book, and had closed it again. To-morrow the page would be shown him, he would read what was inscribed there. No effort on his part, no imposition of his will, no power of his to organise and build up would alter it. Though{304} the crisis was yet to come, its issue was already determined.

THREE:This, though the last of Mrs Fyson��s misdeeds, was not the first, and Mrs Keeling almost forgot the duty of thankfulness for blessings when she remembered that dreadful occasion. Shortly after Norah��s final appearance in the evening, Mrs Fyson had called, and under the pretext of a digestion-visit after her dinner had hissed out a series of impertinent questions as to how ��it had all ended.�� Fool though she might be, Mrs Keeling was not of that peculiarly hopeless sort that confides domestic difficulties to the ears of gossips, and had with some appearance of astonishment merely said that she and Miss Propert had had a very pleasant chat while Mr Keeling was telephoning for a cab to take Miss Propert home. On which Mrs Fyson had looked exactly like a ferret and said, ��Did he bring her into your drawing-room? That was very clever!{179}��THE ENGINEER AT HIS POST. THE ENGINEER AT HIS POST.

THREE:CHAPTER XXVIII."'Once upon a time, it is said, there lived a very old badger in the temple known as Morin-je, where there was also an iron teapot called Bumbuku Chagama, which was a precious thing in that sacred place. One day when the chief priest, who was fond of tea and kept the pot always hanging in his sitting-room, was about taking it, as usual, to make tea for drinking, a tail came out of it. He was startled, and called together all the little bourges, his pupils, that they might behold the apparition. Supposing it to be the mischievous work of a fox or badger, and being resolved to ascertain its real character, they made due preparations. Some of them tied handkerchiefs about their heads, and some stripped the coats from their shoulders, and armed themselves with sticks and bits of firewood. But when they were about to beat the vessel down, wings came out of it; and as it flew about from one side to another, like a dragon-fly, while they pursued it, they could neither strike nor secure it. Finally, however, having[Pg 237] closed all the windows and sliding-doors, after hunting it vigorously from one corner to another, they succeeded in confining it in a small space, and presently in capturing it.

THREE:"Oh, I don't know, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why, just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have you not?"One of the most interesting street sights of their first day in Pekin was a procession carrying a dragon made of bamboo covered with painted paper. There was a great noise of tom-toms and drums to give warning of the approach of the procession, and there was the usual rabble of small boys that precedes similar festivities everywhere. The dragon was carried by five men, who held him aloft on sticks that also served to give his body an undulating motion in imitation of life. He was not pretty to look upon, and his head seemed too large for his body. The Chinese idea of the dragon is, that he is something very hideous, and they certainly succeed in representing their conception of him. Dr. Bronson explained that the dragon was frequently carried in procession at night, and on these occasions the hollow body was illuminated, so that it was more hideous, if possible, than in the daytime.