might have ended blindly on open space, as streets which traverse a
city and are bare in vacancy beyond the dwellings. It was possible we
were encompassed by walls, but only one wall was visible. There we
idled, all strangers, and to remain strangers, in a large hall roofed
by a dome of coloured glass. Quite properly, palms stood beneath. There
were offices and doors everywhere. On a broad staircase a multitude of
us wandered aimlessly up and down. Each side of the stairway were
electric lifts, intermittent and brilliant apparitions. I began to
understand why the saloon passengers thought nothing of the voyage.
They were encountering nothing unfamiliar. They had but come to another
hotel for a few days.

I attempted to find my cabin, but failed. A uniformed guide took care
of me. But my cabin, curtained, upholstered, and warm, with mirrors and
plated ware, sunk somewhere deeply among carpeted and silent streets
down each of which the perspective of glow-lamps looked interminable,
left me still questioning. The long walk had given me a fear that I was
remote from important affairs which might be happening beyond. My
address was 323. The street door--I was down a side turning,
though--bore that number. A visitor could make no mistake, supposing he
could find the street and my side turning. That was it. There was a
very great deal in this place for everybody to remember, and most of us
were strangers. No doubt, however, we were afloat, if the lifebelts in
the rack meant anything. Yet the cabin, insulated from all noise, was
not soothing, but disturbing. I had been used to a ship in which you
could guess all that was happening even when in your bunk; a sensitive
and communicative ship.

A steward appeared at my door, a stranger out of nowhere, and asked
whether I had seen a bag not mine in the cabin. He might have been
created merely to put that question, for I never saw him again on the
voyage. This liner was a large province having irregular and shifting
bounds, permitting incontinent entrance and disappearance. All this
should have inspired me with an idea of our vastness and importance,
but it did not. I felt I was one of a multitude included in a nebulous
mass too vague to hold together unless we were constantly wary.

In the saloon there was the solid furniture of rare woods, the ornate
decorations, and the light and shadows making vague its limits and
giving it an appearance of immensity, to keep the mind from th