At beefy luncheon-tables, and in gorgeous,
stuffy bars tapestried with Lincrusta-Walton, he had listened to the
innumerable tales of the town, in which greed, crookedness, ambition,
rectitude, hatred, and sexual love were extraordinarily mixed--the last
being by far the smallest ingredient. He liked the town; he revelled in
it. It seemed to him splendid in its ineradicable, ever-changing,
changeless humanity. And as the train bored its way through the granite
bowels of the city, he thought pleasurably upon all these matters. And
with them in his mind there gradually mingled the images of Lois and
Marguerite. He cared not what their virtues were or what their faults
were. He enjoyed reflecting upon them, picturing them with their
contrasted attributes, following them into the future as they developed
blindly under the unperceived sway of the paramount instincts which had
impelled and would always impel them towards their ultimate destiny. He
thought upon himself, and about himself he was very sturdily cheerful,
because he had had a most satisfactory interview with Sir Isaac on the
previous afternoon.
A few minutes later he walked behind a portmanteau-bearing night-porter
into the wide-corridored, sleeping hotel, whose dust glittered in the
straight shafts of early sunlight.
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