f, are solitary. Others are with wives, with children--but
with new wives, new children. The associations of home have been
forgotten, even though home's actual appendages be here. The members of
the little domestic circles are using company manners. They are
actually making conversation, 'breaking the ice.' They are new here to
one another. They are new to themselves. How much newer to you! You
cannot 'place' them. That paterfamilias with the red moustache--is he a
soldier, a solicitor, a stockbroker, what? You play vaguely, vainly, at
the game of attributions, while the little orchestra in yonder bower of
artificial palm-trees plays new, or seemingly new, cake-walks. Who are
they, these minstrels in the shadow? They seem not to be the Red
Hungarians, nor the Blue, nor the Hungarians of any other colour of the
spectrum. You set them down as the Colourless Hungarians, and resume
your study of the tables. They fascinate you, these your fellow-diners.
You fascinate them, doubtless. They, doubtless, are cudgelling their
brains to 'spot' your state in life--your past, which now has escaped
you. Next day, some of them are gone; and you miss them, almost
bitterly. But others succeed them, not less detached and enigmatic than
they. You must never speak to one of them. You must never lapse into
those casual acquaintances of the 'lounge' or the smoking-room. Nor is
it hard to avoid them. No Englishman, how gregarious and garrulous
soever, will dare address another Englishman in whose eye is no spark
of invitation. There must be no such spark in yours. Silence is part of
the cure for you, and a very important part. It is mainly through
unaccustomed silence that your nerves are made trim again. Usually, you
are giving out in talk all that you receive through your senses of
perception. Keep silence now. Its gold will accumulate in you at
compound interest. You will realise the joy of being full of
reflections and ideas. You will begin to hoard them proudly, like a
miser. You will gloat over your own cleverness--you, who but a few days
since, were feeling so stupid. Solitude in a crowd, silence among
chatterboxes--these are the best ministers to a mind diseased. And with
the restoration of the mind, the body will be restored too. You, who
were physically so limp and pallid, will be a ruddy Hercules now. And
when, at the moment of departure, you pass through the hall, shyly
distributing to the servants that largesse which is so slight