t it should be
so, for, he thought, if I'm old, it won't last much longer. But as he
did not age quite as fast as he would have liked, he bought himself a
wig with long white curls. He felt better after that, for it disguised
him completely, so completely that he did not know himself.

With long strides, his hands crossed on his back, he walked up and down
the pavements, lost in a brown study; he seemed to be looking for some
one, or expecting some one. If his eyes met the glance of other eyes,
he did not respond to the question in them; if anybody tried to make his
acquaintance, he would never talk of anything but things and objects.
And he never said "I" or "I find," but always "it seems." He had lost
himself, as he did one day just as he was going to shave. He was sitting
before his looking-glass, his chin covered with a lather of soap; he
raised the hand which held the razor and looked into the glass; then he
beheld the room behind his back, but he could not see his face, and
all at once he realised how matters stood. Now he was filled with a
passionate yearning to find himself again. He had given the best part of
himself to his wife, for she had his will, and so he decided to go and
see her.

When he was back in his native country and walked through the streets in
his white wig, not a soul recognised him. But a musician who had been in
Italy, meeting him in town one day, said in a loud voice, "There goes a
maestro!"

Immediately Jubal imagined that he was a great composer. He bought some
music paper and started to write a score; that is to say, he wrote a
number of long and short notes on the lines, some for the violins,
of course, others for the wood-wind, and the remainder for the brass
instruments. He sent his work to the Conservatoire. But nobody could
play the music, because it was not music, but only notes.

A little later on he was met by an artist who had been in Paris. "There
goes a model!" said the artist. Jubal heard it, and at once believed
that he was a model, for he believed everything that was said of him,
because he did not know who or what he was.

Presently he remembered his wife, and he resolved to go and see her. He
did go, but she had married again, and she and her second husband, who
was a baron, had gone abroad.

At last he grew tired of his quest, and, like all tired men, he felt a
great yearning for his mother. He knew that she was a widow and lived in
a cottage in the mountains, so