ble as they were, they were the
outcome of facts. Possibly in them, and in the world's other ugly facts,
Potterism and all truth-shirking found whatever justification it had.
Sentimentalism spread a rosy veil over the ugliness, draping it decently.
Making it, thought Gideon, how much worse; but making it such as
Potterites could face unwincing.

The rain beat down. At its soft, chill touch Gideon's brain cooled and
cooled, till he seemed to see everything in a cold, hard, crystal
clarity. Life and death--how little they mattered. Life was paltry, and
death its end. Yet when the world, the Potterish world, dealt with death
it became something other than a mere end; it became a sensation, a
problem, an episode in a melodrama. The question, when a man died, was
always how and why. So, when Hobart had died, they were all dragged into
a net of suspicion and melodrama--they all became for a time absurd
actors in an absurd serial in the Potter press. You could not escape from
sensationalism in a sensational world. There was no room for the pedant,
with his greed for unadorned and unemotional precision.

Gideon sighed sharply as he turned into Oxford Street, Oxford Street was
and is horrible. Everything a street should not be, even when it was
down, and now it was up, which was far worse. If Gideon had not been
unnerved by the painted person at the corner of Baker Street he would
never have gone home this way, he would have gone along Marylebone and
Euston Road. As it was, he got into a bus and rode unhappily to Gray's
Inn Road, where he lived.

He sat up till three in the morning working out statistics for an
article. Statistics, figures, were delightful. They were a rest.
They mattered.

4

Two days later, at the _Fact_ office, Peacock, turning over galley slips,
said, 'This thing of yours on Esthonian food conditions looks like a
government schedule. Couldn't you make it more attractive?'

'To whom?' asked Gideon.

'Well--the ordinary reader.'

'Oh, the ordinary reader. I meant it to be attractive to people who want
information.'

'Well, but a little jam with the powder.... For instance, you draw no
inference from your facts. It's dull. Why not round the thing off into a
good article?'

'I can't round things. I don't like them round, either. I've given the
facts, unearthed with considerable trouble and pains. No one else has.
Isn't it enough?'

'Oh, it'll do.' Peacock's eyes glanced over the other proofs on