Ah, but where are you going if instead of brushing past the old man with the white beard, the silver medal, and the cheap violin, you let him go on with his story, which ends in an invitation to step somewhere, to his room, presumably, off Queen's Square, and there he shows you a collection of birds' eggs and a letter from the Prince of Wales's secretary, and this (skipping the intermediate stages) brings you one winter's day to the Essex coast, where the little boat makes off to the ship, and the ship sails and you behold on the skyline the Azores; and the flamingoes rise; and there you sit on the verge of the marsh drinking rum-punch, an outcast from civilization, for you have committed a crime, are infected with yellow fever as likely as not, and--fill in the sketch as you like.
As frequent as street corners in Holborn are these chasms in the continuity of our ways.

Yet we keep straight on.
Rose Shaw, talking in rather an emotional manner to Mr.Bowley at Mrs.
Durrant's evening party a few nights back, said that life was wicked because a man called Jimmy refused to marry a woman called (if memory serves) Helen Aitken.
Both were beautiful.

Both were inanimate.

The oval tea-table invariably separated them, and the plate of biscuits was all he ever gave her.

He bowed; she inclined her head.