TWO:"I'm most afraid," he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which Gholson brought in. "Here,"--he handed it to me--"and here, here's the despatch too."As the car sped swiftly along, Gregg sat back with folded arms and gazed upwards at the now crystalline skies, wondering, as he had never wondered before, about that incomprehensible immensity which for centuries of successive generations man had silently respected. No authoritative voice had ever claimed to penetrate that supreme mystery. Priests had evoked the gods from that starry depth, poets had sung of the swinging hemispheres, scientists had traced comets and knew the quality of each solar earth; but still that vast arch spanned all the movements of crawling mankind, and closed him in like a basin placed over a colony of ants. TWO:��But it��s all so hopeless. There��s nothing left for me. All the things we planned together������ TWO:"And yet the guide was not so far out of the way, according to the Chinese idea. The Chinese bring food to the graves of their friends, and leave it there as an offering. The spirits of the dead are believed to linger around the spot and to eat this food, but it is really devoured by the priests and others who stay around the cemetery, and what they do not eat or carry away is consumed by the birds. At certain seasons they have grand festivals, when many thousands of people go to the cemeteries with offerings for the dead, and good things for themselves. The affair is more like a picnic than a ceremony of mourning; and when it breaks up, the mourners go to the theatre or some other place of amusement. The best burial-place is on a hill-side, and the tomb is made in the form of a terrace, or rather of three terraces, with steps leading up to them. As you look at it[Pg 413] from a little distance, the tomb has the shape of a horseshoe, or, better still, of 'Omega,' the last letter of the Greek alphabet. TWO:Two small tables, about twelve inches high and fifteen inches square.[Pg 173] These tables held the dinner and tea service, and were removed when the meal was over.Secretly he wondered at the obtuseness of this man, who had thought such a scheme within the wildest range of possibilities. For himself he would not have lent a sixpence either of his own or of public money on such an enterprise. Yet he knew that Lord Inverbroom had been a Foreign Secretary of outstanding eminence, diplomatic, large-viewed, one who had earned the well-merited confidence of the public. Without doubt he had great qualities, but they did not appear to embrace the smallest perception on the subject of business.